Telekinetic's Sword
by Worldbringer of Joseun
Summary: After his complete victory in the Miyu-verse Grail War, Shirou Emiya has been wandering the world of Remnant for years, searching for his sister. He finds himself in Vale during the Vytal Festival. During the fighting, he finds himself assisting a Huntress, a professor of Beacon. Will he find Miyu? Or will he get distracted from his search by the new people that need him? (Hiatus)
1. Chapter 1: A Searching Sword

**A.N. This is the product of me entering the writing contest hosted by Alex Kellar. The topic is forbidden or impossible loves. I entered during the pre-start stage of the contest so I got to claim one of the bonus characters.**

**And for those wondering about Technician's Order, I am working on it. I just have trouble with a character which is leading to Writer's Block.**

Telekinetic's Sword

By Worldbringer of Joseun

Chapter 1: A Searching Sword

"Miyu! Miyu Emiya!" Shirou shouted to the woman heading to the contestant's seating.

Shirou dodged through the crowds of people attending the Vytal Festival, trying to get to the woman on the latest winning team, the one who had to be his adopted sister.

Shirou broke free of the last person between him and the black-haired, golden eyed woman placing her foot on the bottom of the stairs.

"Miyu Satatsuki!" Shirou shouted, trying out a different name his sister might have used.

She didn't respond. Perhaps she had changed her name? He could see why she would have after all that had happened on their old world.

Shirou raced forward, managing to get up right behind the long black-haired woman before his hand landed a touch on her arm.

The woman momentarily froze before turning to face him. The lack of recognition on the woman's face stopped Shirou's heart. It wasn't her. It could have been, maybe. A few stirrings of hope fluttered in his chest, refusing to die.

Stupid, stubborn hope. But it was all Shirou had left in him. A machine-like determination that refused to just die while hope still burned in its furnace.

The woman's team members also stopped as they noticed her not continue walking on with them. They turned and walked back to casually surround her and now him. Their arms were crossed over their chests, feet planted wide as they stared at him, frowning at him, especially the brown skinned girl.

Swallowing hard, Shirou tried to ignore them. _I've been in worse situations,_ he thought. Still, he felt the stirrings of danger, one that could actually threaten him, a left-over trait from installing the Archer card during the Grail War, as the golden eyes focused on him.

"I'm sorry, but who are you?" the woman asked, eyes narrowed as her stance changed to a more defensive one.

"I'm Shirou," Shirou said, a tad impatiently before asking desperately "Are you Miyu?"

"Miyu?" she repeated, a slight frown creasing her face. "I don't know anyone named Miyu. My name's Cinder Fall. And you are?"

"Ah," Shirou grimaced. A false lead.

Shoot. He had been so hopeful too. He had been looking for her for years now and this was the first lead he had ever received.

"I'm sorry. Shirou Emiya," the man introduced himself as he took a step back and out of her personal space. "You just looked like her so I hoped you were her."

"And you thought that your girlfriend would want to see you if she didn't respond?" the only male on the team of four snorted in disdain. "Get real, dude."

"Miyu's my sister," Shirou explained, turning to face the man while still trying to keep as many of the people in sight as he could. "Adopted sister, really and she was kidnapped several years ago. You just looked a lot like her so I hoped…"

Shirou trailed off as the group examined him more closely, paranoia dancing in their eyes.

As for Shirou, he was getting suspicious too. This group, they didn't act like normal people. They acted like they had a dangerous secret to hide.

Well, as long as their secret wasn't Miyu, Shirou really didn't care. Government, magus, or criminal, his only concern was finding his sister.

"I see," Cinder said carefully. "You saw me and thought that I might be your sister."

"Well, not as much," Shirou confessed. "A detective saw you and thought that you might have been my sister so he called me and I came here to confirm if you were her. Really, sorry about this. I got too overexcited. You really look a lot like her though."

It was true. Cinder Fall resembled Miyu quite a bit. Her skin was as fair as Miyu's, their facial shape was the same, and both Miyu and Cinder had the same long black hair. Furthermore, after Miyu had made her wish to be his sister, her eyes and Cinder's were the similar shades of golden brown.

If you put the two side by side, you could be forgiven for thinking they were sisters.

The team of four glanced at each other, suspicion in their eyes before Cinder spoke up again.

"So you someone was watching out for a person who looked like me, saw me somewhere, and then know someone who looks like me, enough to reach out when I didn't respond to her name," Cinder clarified. "What I want to know, is why did you reach out when I didn't respond and how did you end?"

"Well, you look really a lot like her. Uncannily so. And when I saw you at the opening ceremony, the camera was out far enough that I couldn't see that you weren't Miyu," Shirou sighed as he shifted his feet in preparation to turn around and leave the floating stadium. "I suppose that you are a bit too old to be her though. Miyu would be around 14 by now. Sorry again about-"

Shirou stopped, a thought entering his mind.

"Actually," Shirou slowly started turning back to Cinder. "If it wouldn't be a bother, could I ask you if you have seen anyone like her? She looks a lot like you, same hair color, same skin tone, same brown eyes."

"No, I'm afraid I haven't seen anyone who looks like me," Cinder said, one arm crossing under her chest. "But if you would give me your contact information, I could send a message to you if I see anyone like that. Do you have a picture of her?"

"No," Shirou shook his head even as his hand dipped into the bag on his back and pulled out a reward poster centered on a drawing. "I have an artist's sketch but we never had a camera."

Cinder looked at the drawing. The artist had been very, very good and had an occasional commission as a police sketch artist, all of which he displayed in his studio. The artist had been happy to sketch a picture of Miyu and let Shirou copy it at a discounted price.

And Shirou could tell from the surprise on Ms. Fall's face that she could see the resemblance between Miyu and herself. Only Miyu was much younger than the woman.

But there wasn't the spark of recognition that Shirou was hoping for.

"My apologies," Cinder said as she got out her scroll. "But if we see her, we'll make sure to call you."

"Thank you," Shirou said gratefully. "My name is Shirou Emiya and my contact information is…"

As the man rattled off his online address, the team reputedly from Haven all noticed that the man made no move to get out his own scroll.

* * *

"So, anything we should do about him?" Mercury asked as the white-haired and tanned man walked away casually slipping through their encirclement like it didn't matter. But he definitely noticed it and was watching for the first hint of action. He just didn't feel threatened by them. Took guts, skill or overconfidence to act like that.

"The same thing we do about all potential threats, investigate first and I'll decide later," Cinder said, eyes still on the suspicious stranger. "He could have been trying to flirt but that would have been a horrendous attempt. Unfortunately, I have heard worse. He could be an agent for some group. He could be genuine and desperate. Desperate men would go unreasonable lengths. But who looks for an adopted sister at his age and with their age gap?"

"Maybe she was kidnapped by some terrorist group," Mercury jokingly suggested.

Like the White Fang went unsaid. They knew better to discuss it out in public.

"Or it could be a lie and he is trying to sneak closer to you," Emerald offered up, glaring after the man.

Oh, jealous Emerald. Just because I asked for his contact information doesn't mean that I intend to date him. It was just a way to conduct a background check.

She needed more than just a name and a face after all.

"Emerald," Cinder said softly but firmly. "Go follow him. Make sure you aren't seen but observe his actions and where he is going. Don't interact with him. Just gather information on him."

"Yes ma'am," Emerald replied promptly and walked after the stranger.

"Mercury, investigate the man's history," Cinder ordered as she sent the contact information from her scroll to his. "I want to know where he is from and if his sister actually exists. Find out his travel logs and who he is affiliated with and what his plans are. Use everything you can to investigate for anything suspicious. And while you're at it, see who was the detective was."

"Got it boss," Mercury lazily saluted before opening his scroll and started examining the man's information using the CCT hack as she had subtly ordered.

His mockery was barely acceptable for public image. Cinder decided to not rebuke him for it.

Out in the open at least.

* * *

Glynda sighed and slumped a little over her tea in the safety and security of her dorm.

Beacon's teachers were all experienced Huntsman. They had learned at Huntsman schools, fought in the wilds, faced numerous threats and killed a variety of Grimm.

Port held the record for variety of Grimm killed.

But all of that came with a price.

They had come from different backgrounds and walks of life. Ozpin had once been a street rat. Port had been a village boy from near the borders of the kingdom. Peach's family had skimped and saved and she only managed to get into Beacon on a scholarship. Oobleck had come from a middle-class scholar family. And Glynda's father had been an advisor to one of Vale's councilors.

But some things were universal. Such as they had all slept with their teams in the dorms. They had all spent times out in the field.

They had all learned to always sleep alongside their teammates.

It was one of the things they had learned. If you were apart from your teammates, you died. If you were alone, you died. If a Grimm attacks in the night and your teammates aren't nearby, you die.

They had all lived this long. They had each spent anywhere between one and several decades as active Huntsmen and Huntresses and were still alive with all their limbs.

Only Peter Port didn't feel uncomfortable sleeping anywhere other than near other Hunters. But he was Peter. He told stories of fighting Grimm off while he was still asleep.

Judging by his bouts of sleep walking, it might have even been true. And as the stress of providing security for the Vytal festival mounted, he had been sleep walking more often.

Such as two nights ago when Bart Oobleck had had to spend most of the night dodging Peter's attempts at fighting a creep in his dreams when the portly professor had sleepwalked from his married housing suite into the single professor dorms.

Fortunately, throwing Bart's cup of hot coffee into Peter's face woke him up and they were all able to fall back to sleep once Peter had left.

But the stress of the festival was too much!

Glynda barely had enough time left for herself in between being deputy headmistress of Beacon, teaching the combat lessons, fixing the damages to the academy, disciplining the students, and participating in a secret conspiracy to save the world and protect the maidens and relics.

Adding the Vytal Festival into the mix was pushing her past her limits!

She needed some help! Another combat teacher, a maintenance worker, an assistant, someone! Soon she would be at the point where she would accept even Qrow's help with her classes!

And she hadn't made that mistake since the last time the Vytal Festival was in Vale!

Glynda took off her glasses to rub her eyes.

She was tired. And the festival wasn't even half-way through yet.

But there was always more work, Glynda knew.

Always more.

She took another sip of tea before opening her scroll.

She couldn't wait for this to be over.

* * *

"Spam, spam, spam, spam, porn spam, a bill, another bill, more spam, spam, some bills, more spam, and ooh, what do we have here?" Mercury mused out loud as he looked through Shirou Emiya's mailbox in the security of their room.

Cinder let him work while she examined Emiya's recorded transactions. Most of it was for food and the like but there were a bunch of suspicious transactions. Some going into his accounts and some going out. And involving a lot of random people spread out over the country of Mistral.

Either he was doing odd jobs for basically everyone including several known criminal syndicates and being paid in small to moderate amounts or this was a complex web to disguise the money flow.

She wasn't doing anything important right now anyway and most of detective work was sifting through loads of nothing to find one grain of something incriminating. She had done it before to find the home of Marcus Black.

Very boring but necessary.

"Hey boss," Mercury called out. "Apparently, he hired some detective agency near Haven to look for his sister and they saw you board an airship to here and thought that you might be who they were looking for. That's why he followed you here."

"I see," Cinder cocked her head. Random chance and a random sighting. Or was it? "Investigate the agency. If they are a front, then I want to know who they are a front for. Also, we took that plane several weeks ago. When did he get here?"

"Let's see," Mercury said, tapping his scroll a bit. "It looks like he arrived just a few days ago in Vale after getting a passport. And he bought a ticket for the festival the day the festival began. Judging by the time stamp, he probably bought it soon after the first broadcast which included all the competitors lined up."

"Hmm," Cinder mused. She and her team had joined the other teams in standing in front of the crowd to start off the festival. The broadcast would have allowed him to see her. If he was really looking for his sister, he probably picked her out of the lineup immediately and then acted on it.

It looked like Emiya had just taken a chance at following her to Vale, hoping to find and talk with her. Then he got somewhat lucky at being able to talk with her, only to discover that she wasn't his sister.

Altogether, things were lining up to indicate that he was just looking for his sister, and using any opportunity he found.

Painting a picture of a desperate man. Or was that he wanted her to think?

"But from the hospital records which are the earliest records I can find about him," Mercury said. "I would say he might have been a member of a Mistrali crime family who quit and managed to survive the exit proceedings. After that, he got his new identification and left for a new life. Started searching for his sister right away."

"It is either a cover story and he is a mole for someone or he decided to quit a criminal syndicate in order to avoid starting an underground war as he tried to get the girl away from a different gang," Cinder mused. "However, as long as he didn't fight, no criminals were turned in. But he has no compunctions at killing bandits if they attack."

"Not a mole," Mercury disagreed. "If he was then this cover ID would be much better. We wouldn't be questioning it this deeply if he was. He didn't even have a birth record until he needed a passport and I am certain it was faked by one of our former forger's competitors. Not to mention his age is kind of young for his appearance. The identification says that he just turned 20. Also, the information on his hospital record and his passport don't match. The kid in the hospital either went white early and had a late growth spurt or some identity thief stole the kid's identity and sold it to the man we met. Only he really doesn't look like the kid's whose identity was stolen."

"How likely do you think that is the case?" Cinder asked.

"Not likely," Mercury evaluated. "I honestly think it is the kid scenario and not the identity thief one. Most people when starting a new life take some things with them. Some cash, mementos, or at least clothes on their back. The kid started with nothing."

"If so, then he is either a mix of incompetent and competent in covering his tracks or he is what he seems," Cinder summarized. "A desperate brother or father with severed ties to criminal elements."

"He could also be using refuge in audacity," Mercury snorted as he considered it. "He could also be a Wildlander who grew up away from civilization. But even I had more information public than he did and I grew up in the mountains."

"And if he is a Wildlander, he wouldn't be in the cities," Cinder mused. "They can't stand the crowding. Unless he really was looking for his sister and is only tolerating it for the sake of the search and is very good at hiding discomfort."

"He is unfamiliar with technology and Dust," Mercury brought up as he sent a list of damage reports to Cinder. There were a lot of incidents soon after his appearance that resulted in damage to Dust based technology but the incidents significantly decreased after the first year. "Guy doesn't even have a scroll. Just uses library and other public buildings to check his information, nearly daily. Has a random spread too, sometimes several times a day, sometimes he won't check for days and then checks from a place distant to where he last checked."

"You are thinking that he is genuine," Cinder stated.

"Yeah," Mercury said, scratching his head. "He is the blend of consistent and inconsistent. You don't see that unless they are a wanderer doing something. He has habits but sometimes they slide. He is definitely hiding something, that's for sure, but it doesn't look like it is tied to us."

"His criminal background," Cinder concluded.

"Can't find hide nor hair of him before that hospital," Mercury agreed. "Probably was some sort of pet assassin kept off the records so that no one suspected his existence. Maybe held in check by his sister being held hostage."

"And when she was kidnapped, his leash snapped," Cinder said, thoughtfully. "If we can find and secure his sister first, we could use him."

Mercury started sweating a bit. Probably because he was the assassin of the group. Bringing in a new assassin would imply him being replaced.

Assassins tended not to survive replacement.

"Oh, don't worry," Cinder reassured Mercury. The situation was too delicate for one of her members to get cold feet now. Personal replacement or recruitment would be more likely to ruin the plan than help at this stage. "He would have been of more use in secrecy but now that he has ties stretching all across Mistral, he wouldn't be able to move without drawing attention. But there is more than one way to skin a cat."

Mercury quietly breathed out a sigh of relief.

"Now we just need to find out what Emerald found out and go from there," Cinder said. "Until then, continue searching. We just need one crack in his disguise to determine if his portrayal is real or not."

Mercury nodded and the two continued scouring the electronic history of Shirou Emiya.

* * *

Shirou could feel someone's eyes on his back. He had felt them ever since he got off the bullhead from Amity Colosseum and as he had walked through the streets of the crowded city of Vale.

He let that person watch. He really didn't have anything to hide other than his magecraft. But given how technology worked, who knew what would be magecraft here and what would be science?

Well, other than one of Remnant's magi. But Shirou hadn't met one yet. He had met warriors who used a system of fighting unique to Remnant but Shirou figured it was just complex usage of Dust.

What else could it be and how else would there be so many fighting styles that all assumed the same variety of barriers? Obviously, Remnant had developed a technology that used skin-tight invisible military armor barrier that they distributed to their elites.

As for his watcher, Shirou tried to remember what his father had taught him back when they were assassins and heroes for justice but before they settled down into Fuyuki.

It was something about the merits of letting your opponent watch you be innocent versus the drawbacks of letting them know too much about you.

If Kiritsugu was here, what would he say?

Shirou moved along with the crowd as he tried to figure out what his dad would order him to do.

First, find out who they were. Some people you wanted to let watch you. Like Secret Service or spies. Once they were convinced you were harmless, you basically calmed down the entire organization.

Second, don't let them know your safe house or the full extent of your abilities.

Shirou didn't have a safe house. He had a hotel room right now, but he wasn't so foolish to think that it was safe. It was a good place to sleep and store his stuff while he was in the city. Nothing more.

As for the full extent of his abilities, Shirou had no intentions of revealing the full extent of his magecraft yet. Even to one of Remnant's magus, he would not reveal his Reality Marble nor how many weapons he had stored there.

Shirou decided that he could let this spy follow him for now. Try and shake them off when he returned to the hotel and try to figure out who they were, yes, but that was part of this form of cloak and daggers. It would just remind him not to use magecraft in the open for a while.

As for Shirou's magecraft, it still had the massive jumpstart that linking with his alternate self had provided. He had given up the Archer Card with the ties to the Heroic Spirit inside but he had kept the card installed long enough that some of EMIYA's experiences and skills had rubbed off onto him. Such as telling if someone was following him or had hostility towards him.

Not to mention the Reality Marble with the entire arsenal of a Heroic Spirit at his fingertips.

But none of that helped him find his sister after he had killed Angelica Ainsworth, the holder of the True Archer Class Card.

His memory of the last desperate battle of the Grail War culminating inside his Reality Marble at Mt. Ryuudou rose unbidden to his mind.

A furious pair of storms composed of naught but blades flying through the air at intense speeds only to collide with their counterpart. Great swords being treated as common projectiles. And the mountain felling swords and volcanic colliding divine sword as they fell through the air and knocked each other off course.

And in the midst of that, Shirou charged, using his tracing and swords to block what managed to get through his own storm.

And Angelica had let him approach only to show that she could also use Flash Air to displace his attack, Shirou needed an attack that she couldn't block or see coming.

And when she decided to trap him in Enkidu again while she drew a sword he could not copy or read, he thought of one.

This was his world. It was a part of him. He could project weapons near himself and fire them off.

So why not take advantage of this world being a part of him to create one under her feet? She had tried to do a similar thing on him before he had invoked his Reality Marble. It would only be fair to do it back.

A second later, a brand-new broadsword Noble Phantasm had ripped its way free of the ground and cut the surprised doll in half while the shrinking moon still shone in the sky above his inner world.

As Julian's puppet of a sister died, her card flew off to join the other seven around Miyu. After he ended utilizing the Reality Marble and restored reality by shrinking his own soul and Reality Marble back inside of himself.

Shirou would never forget the relief in his sister's eyes at seeing him, as bloodied and cut up as he was, standing above the featureless doll body that all of the competitors had been.

But Shirou hadn't considered that the Grail was only meant to work with seven cards.

Eight just meant that Miyu had a little more power to work with.

And as Shirou watched his sister go off to a safer and better world, his sister, in a fit of selfishness, magically grabbed him and dragged him along with her.

Really, Miyu. He had fought to give her a new life, one away from all the suffering he had helped bring on her. One with a small share of happiness.

A wish to go see the ocean shouldn't involve grabbing your villain of a brother and dragging him along with her when leaving that world.

Shirou chuckled to himself.

He probably ought to scold her for that. She should have used that extra energy to make her own share of happiness larger. He was fine with staying on the dying Earth if she got to live and be happy.

And now they were on a world that was also dying. Dying with a struggle but dying nonetheless.

Shirou was no idiot. He had seen the estimates of the numbers of both humanity and Faunus-kind versus the estimated number of Grimm.

No technology would allow the horrendously out-numbered humans to win at over a million to one odds. Humanity had too small of a percentage of their population as soldiers to do more than defend themselves. And with the large number of varieties and the sheer amount of space the Grimm controlled ranging from the bottom of the oceans to the peaks of inhospitable glaciers and volcanoes, no weapon other than an Anti-World one would work against them all.

But Anti-World weapons had a problem of their own.

Shirou glanced up at where the shattered moon would be in the sun-lit sky, wondering if the last Anti-World weapon used on Remnant had had some difficulties in targeting flying Grimm like the raven-like Nevermore or the wasp-like Lancers.

Despite all that, Shirou figured that he could probably be fine here. Kanshou and Bakuya were extremely effective against Grimm, their anti-monster property slicing through the black monsters like they were air instead of butter.

If the Grimm was all that he had to deal with, he could carve out a little slice of happiness here for both him and Miyu. He still had many of the remembered skills, weapons, and the abilities of Archer and his own travels with Kiritsugu meant that he could earn a living as either a warrior, a soldier, a mercenary, a mechanic, or a cook with Miyu's help.

No, the issue was, he hadn't seen Miyu when he crash landed onto this world. The light that protected them from the awareness of what they were traveling through had also blocked him from seeing Miyu in front of him. If she had landed before him, who knew where she was.

Shirou needed to find Miyu. He needed to know if his sister was safe. If she was happy.

If she was stuck on this death world hostile to humanity.

Shirou stopped at the first bulletin board he saw and examined it, taking an opportunity to examine the street behind him for the follower.

Once again, he couldn't recognize any of the faces from the last time he had looked. But he could still feel that someone was following him.

As for the bulletin board, it was rather old. Most of the papers here had that yellow tinge that indicated long exposure to the elements. It probably wasn't used much due to the convenience of a scroll replacing these boards for the purpose of mass communications.

But Shirou couldn't really afford a scroll. Not if he wanted to find Miyu. Not if he wanted to pay detectives to keep an eye out for her. Not if he wanted to bribe criminals into finding her. Not if he was going to see every single human on this planet and could confirm if Miyu was here on Remnant.

Or if she was dead.

Shirou hoped not. He really hoped his younger sister wasn't here.

Because Miyu had never learned how to protect herself. Even one lowly Grimm might kill her.

But if he was going to look, he needed more eyes out.

Shirou reached into his traveling bag and pulled out another copy of the 'Missing' poster that he had made hundreds of copies of and had posted all over Mistral.

Now he was going to start here in Vale.

One poster at a time. One person at a time.

Because if you wanted to accomplish anything worthwhile, you had to start and walk one step at a time. Even if each step only led you nowhere or led you down a wrong path. You had to start somewhere.

What else could he, as an older brother, do?

* * *

"Report," Cinder ordered to Emerald, laying aside her scroll, as the girl entered their shared dormitory room and shut the door.

"After talking with you, he left the stadium early without watching the next fight," Emerald reported as she moved towards one of the beds and sat down. "After disembarking, he wandered around town until he found an old paper bulletin board and put up a reward poster like the one he showed you. He then went to a public library, after asking for directions, and looked over several profiles on different accounts and servers. All of them about his sister. He then wandered around town for a while looking at people primarily until he entered into a hotel. I was able to confirm what floor he was on and his room number."

Emerald hesitated, looking down. "He's also very sharp. If it wasn't for my Semblance, he would have caught sight of me a several times. And from the way he was acting, he knew he was being followed and tried to shake me or spot me despite not knowing it was me. I apologize for my failure!"

Emerald bowed low, showing her sincerity.

"Understood," Cinder said, reclining on her bed. "Don't let it happen again."

Mercury's report was more comprehensive. But Emerald's confirmed parts.

Shirou Emiya had appeared out of nowhere, had a criminal history, and had the sixth sense that only comes from experience.

He also had no interest in anything other than his sister it seemed like.

"So, what'll we do?" Emerald asked, her attention on Cinder, like a good tool or pet paying attention to her master.

Mercury's joined hers and the two waited patiently for Cinder's decision.

"Right now, nothing." Cinder decided. "We'll keep an eye out for his sister but for the present, we'll leave him alone. He isn't a threat and interacting with him could make things more complex than they need to be. If we don't do anything, he won't interfere. However, if we are able to meet with him again after our success, we'll consider trying to recruit him."

"So, non-interference," Mercury summed up her orders. He shrugged. "All right, I can live with that."

Emerald nodded her acceptance of the orders.

Cinder glanced at the time and stood up as she stretched after sitting for so long. But now was time for dinner. But before she left, the rest of her team standing up to follow her, she gave one last glance at the image of the man who appeared out of nowhere in Mistral and then spent all of his time searching for a sister that also had no records.

"Second thoughts?" Emerald asked, concerned as she stood up to follow her leader.

"Just that I wish I could have once had a brother like him," Cinder said on a passing whim before narrowing her eyes. "But that is all in the past. I no longer need a protector."

_'I am strong now' _only was said inside her own thoughts.

* * *

**A.N. No, this story is not focused on Cinder Fall. She was just a good way to introduce Shirou, one of our protagonists. Now you all know Shirou's motivation, the location and the time frame and what he has been doing since he appeared in Remnant and how he got here. Good objectives for a first chapter.**


	2. Chapter 2: The End of a Sword's Peace

Chapter 2: The End of a Sword's Peace

_Several days later…_

Shirou threw his current Kanshou and Bakuya away.

The copies of the Married Blades joined the storm of swords flying and curving around in the air, creating a sphere of death within which all Grimm were butchered to pieces.

And with the recent additions to the sphere adjusting the courses of each blade, the sphere reached out and grabbed another pack of wolf-like Grimm, easily butchering the whole group as casually as a man would stretch.

One of the first things Shirou had learned about Remnant was that Kanshou and Bakuya's anti-monster properties meant that they easily sliced through the creatures of the Grimm. Add in their ability to be attracted towards their opposite, whether a different iteration of a copy or not…

Shirou did not need to fear Grimm. Small, medium, weird, or animalistic, it didn't matter. All fell easily to at least one or two of these blades. Only the large, dangerous, and intelligent ones survived or required him to put in more of an effort.

Shirou didn't know how the normal fighters against the Grimm survived here. Their weapons didn't have the anti-monster property that made his favorite blades so useful. Their weapons were high-class, made with better metallurgy than any of Archer's weapons except for the ones from the future. But they couldn't cut through the Grimm like a sharp knife through butter.

Actually, Shirou remembered butter putting up a tougher resistance against a knife than some of the weaker Grimm did against a pair of Kanshou and Bakuya.

Shirou guessed that the locals taught their soldiers and elites the movement and attack behaviors of Grimm and weak points learned from generations of battle. Then drilled the techniques and ways to kill Grimm into their students until they did them automatically when faced with the real deal.

But Shirou never received any education here. Miyu was more important than attending a school.

Besides, how would Shirou hide his magecraft at a school? No one believed in magic here so he had to hide his abilities from researchers and professionals.

They might try to take him in for study and then he would never find Miyu.

Shirou spied another flying Grimm screech as it flew above him.

He quickly grabbed a copy of Archer's bow and one of the traced large and very sharp arrows he had in his quiver on his back. Once it was in hand, he aimed just like how he had learned alongside Sakura in Homurahara's Archery dojo, and fired.

Shirou ignored the crash as the Grimm fell onto a building, already dying from the arrow lodged in its brain.

Shirou didn't get why the Grimm were attacking the city nor did he care. The Grimm were monsters, they were killing people and somehow, they had broken through the city defenses and were rampaging through the streets full of defenseless citizens.

Ironic that after he had resigned himself to be a villain in order to sacrifice a world to save his sister, he would be brought to this world where his ability to kill Grimm would make him applauded as a hero.

It was a bitter pill to swallow. But it wasn't wrong to save people. But Miyu was important.

So when Shirou had seen the first Grimm in the sky, he had immediately started climbing to the top of a nearby building. He couldn't put up his sphere of Kanshou and Bakuya as the civilians were everywhere back then. But he could start shooting every Grimm he saw.

And once on top of a building, he could project both a quiver of arrows and Archer's bow and no one would ever know.

The problem was when he saw the land-based Grimm start slaughtering their way through the outermost districts of the city.

The citizens could take cover against the flying Grimm and the ships in the sky could fight back, even if some idiot apparently decided that now was a perfect time to start a mutiny or war or whatever.

Shirou had wondered before how humanity had managed to survive long enough on Remnant to even reach their technological heights. They just seemed too stupid. Cities everywhere that were full of people who had no idea how to fight? A nation of anarchists? A kingdom that ran on corruption? Admittedly, the criminals and anarchists weren't doing too bad of a job but the nations here seemed like they weren't well suited to thrive on this world. Survive, maybe, but not thrive.

But the people were still living people with lives of their own. Shirou was here and Grimm were attacking.

Naturally, he would protect them.

Shirou ran down the street, keeping his whirlwind of Noble Phantasms following him.

The Grimm had already swept through this area and were now emerging from the buildings where they had broken into to kill the people cowering inside. Shirou's arrival caused the Grimm to emerge from their scenes of murder and slaughter in eagerness at the prospect of new prey.

Shirou had learned from depressing experience in Mistral that Grimm were very good at sniffing out people to kill. If the Grimm were at the entrance of the streets behind him, then they had already killed everyone on this street.

Which admittedly made it easier for Shirou to decide where to go.

The districts bordering the wall. The ones the Grimm had surrounded after breaking through places in the walls but still had the guards available to fight and protect the people who lived there.

They needed saving. And Shirou could use his offensive strength to kill hundreds of Grimm without worrying about harming either the civilians or the other fighters around him.

As Shirou entered an intersection, he saw and heard an air bus escorted by a Bullhead flying parallel to his course a few streets down.

Oh good. The ship would allow the civilians to escape.

Shirou was capable of escorting the civilians to safety himself but that would take time. An air bus would mean that he would only have to defend one area rather than a moving group and it would be much faster to get them to safety.

Once the air bus was sent off, Shirou could head to the next area and save them too.

Shirou heard a roar of a bear like Grimm coming from in front of him and his eyes snapped forward.

It wasn't a strong one, like one of the bigger bears with bone like spikes and plates all over. Which means that Shirou didn't need to get fancy to deal with it or the other animal like Grimm behind it.

Instead, Shirou just reached down into his two large sheathes at his side and projected another set of Kanshou and Bakuya before drawing them out and throwing them forward, causing the other flying pairs to pull forward.

The first two swords cut through the Grimm lengthwise, splitting it into thirds as it collapsed to the ground. The rest of the swords followed, cutting the corpse and dicing it up into smaller pieces before Shirou even got close.

By the time Shirou's foot landed where it had died, it already had dissipated into black smoke and was no longer an obstacle.

So Shirou continued running down the street, slaughtering every Grimm on it.

* * *

Glynda used her Semblance to blast a few of the thousand needles that made up her riding crop at high speeds towards the Grimm beneath her Bullhead and the Nevermore in the sky that got to close to the air bus she was escorting.

While she had wanted a break from the Vytal Festival, she hadn't wanted an incident worse than the Breach!

And she was internally gnashing her teeth at how they were played. The Vytal Festival was obviously used by Salem's minions to broadcast despair over the world and to lure the Grimm to Vale. Beacon was under assault as they spoke and she and her colleagues were busy defending the city.

But they had no choice. The professionals were skilled enough to protect civilians while efficiently killing the Grimm but the students were still learning.

Waving her crop and firing another round of projectiles at another Griffon that had gotten too close, she managed to clip its wing, sending it tumbling through the air.

Seeing an opportunity, she picked up a broken metal streetlight and used it as a spear to kill the Griffon.

One more down, several hundred more Grimm to go.

Glynda turned her attention to the skies once again, ready to defend her city and her people.

Even as she continued to use her Semblance to fight against the Grimm, she kept an eye out for people below.

She had enough Aura to be able to grab any of the few survivors in the Grimm controlled areas and bring them up here for their safety. There weren't many of them, but she couldn't leave the few survivors to die.

Glynda spied a flash of movement a few streets off and she turned her head to get a better view.

It was a Hunter, not that she could make out any details such as their appearance from this distance. But only a Hunter would have a few dozen weapons flying around them as they ran down a street towards the Grimm. Admittedly, the running towards the Grimm was the biggest clue as to their profession.

Glynda let him or her continue.

Every Grimm the Hunter killed here was one more that wasn't killing civilians.

As her Bullhead flew on, she killed more and more Grimm, trying to reclaim a portion of the skies to keep the evacuation air bus safe.

But the betrayal of one of the Atlesian warships wasn't making it easy, she noted as she diverted a shot into a large Nevermore. The ship had been part of a squad of four battleships hovering above Beacon but after its betrayal, it was raining shots down on every vehicle that got close.

Glynda's Bullhead and escorted air bus which were heading to a segment of walls close to Beacon's cliff qualified as close. Glynda didn't know what was going on with Atlas and how their ship successfully mutinied, but she hoped they got it under control soon.

Not the least of which was the rogue robots who were ignored by the Grimm as they both turned their attacks onto the humans and Faunus near them.

Glynda ground her teeth. It had been an unpleasant surprise when the Knights had ceased firing on the Grimm in front of her to instead fire on her and Qrow. But that couldn't compare to when she had received communication to jump on board the Bullhead coming to pick her up to rescue a position on the walls bordering Forever Fall that was harboring civilians while under assault from Atlas, White Fang, and the Grimm. Qrow had stayed behind to hold that area on his own.

Her memory not-so-helpfully brought back the images of Atlas Knights marching and firing into the crowds behind them. Something for which she had immediately ended the robots' existence as she flew overhead.

It was horrible. Disgusting. She didn't have the words to describe it.

To take a nation's own army and turn it against their ally's civilians.

Never in Remnant's history had that happened.

As the ship's gun continued to fire, Glynda continued to redirect its attacks away from the ship, trying to land it among either robots or Grimm.

And then, with a whir of engines and the sound of gunfire from below, both the Bullhead and the air bus cleared a building to see their landing zone, a plaza in a seedier residential district.

As the Bullhead slowly descended, Glynda crouched before springing off the Bullhead and onto the top of a nearby store.

She scanned the area, looking for hints of the White Fang, Grimm, or Atlas. There were plenty to be found. A scattering of White Fang bodies on that one street, Atlas robots moving in from the walls, and Grimm thronging in from the streets.

Glynda immediately opened fire, bringing down bodies as far as her eyes could see.

A ragged cheer from the soldiers and civilians behind her sounded as they saw the air bus land safely.

At the same time, Glynda noticed the warship turn its attention away from her rescue expedition, firing on other ships in the sky that were getting close to Beacon.

She couldn't interfere directly with the rouge ship. It was too large, too heavy and too far for her Semblance.

Glynda turned away, leaving the ship for another time while she focusing on bringing down the Grimm and robots assaulting the survivors and refugees who were rushing aboard the air bus.

Several minutes of constant sniping later, Glynda heard the pilot yell that the civilians were all on board and the few surviving soldiers and Hunters were the only ones left.

Glynda turned to get a better view of the fighting as the soldiers and Hunters started a slow retreat. They couldn't turn and run. The Grimm would pounce on them. Instead, they fired as they walked backwards, trusting their training to survive.

Glynda walked along the edge of the rooftop, bringing down whatever Grimm she could see as the soldiers started to get onto the airbus, the first ones laying down cover fire for their fellows.

Glynda could see and count the six surviving Hunters, two of which had injuries and whose Aura was broken, climb aboard the Bullhead.

This was the gathering of the few survivors from the nearby districts. They had fallen back, leaving their dead behind as they sought to gather their strength into one spot as they realized that they couldn't hold their positions alone.

Which was why Glynda and the transport had been dispatched. The position wasn't holdable and there was no point in trying anymore. It would only be a waste of lives.

As the last soldier and two Huntsmen, one of whom was limping and holding onto his fellow, climbed aboard their respective transports, Glynda shook her crop and fired a wave of needles onto the charging hoard of angry Grimm.

Their roars of rage at the escape of their prey turned into screams of pain as the Bullhead leapt into the sky before the helicopter started using its own gun to help Glynda keep the Grimm away from the bigger and slower air bus.

With a roar of the engines, the air bus took off, one soldier bringing down a Beowolf who tried to jump onto the ramp.

As the air bus turned itself around, the Bullhead flew over to Glynda's building, hovering near her with the door opened.

Glynda took the invitation and used her Aura to reinforce her jump into the waiting ship.

It had been a while since she had done a running jump to a hovering Bullhead, Glynda remembered. Fortunately, it hadn't been that long.

"Move to the side!" An Atlesian Hunter yelled as Glynda crouched to better absorb the landing. "Get the ones best at range closest to the doors!"

"I have a ranged Semblance!" Glynda yelled over the roar of the engines as the Bullhead started flying above the air bus.

The Hunters made way for her, letting her squeeze between two Hunters at the doors and get a good view of the city.

It wasn't pretty. Buildings were destroyed and some streets were red with human and Faunus blood while others were littered with corpses from where people had either been gunned down by Atlas's robots or killed by the Grimm.

Glynda closed her eyes to give a brief prayer as she spied a pair of children lying dead among the bodies.

And then she opened them, full of rage, to find Grimm to kill and robots to destroy.

"Nevermore!" The Huntress next to Glynda, one of her former students Glynda noted, shouted.

Glynda snapped her eyes up to sky and spotted a trio of Giant Nevermore following a Griffon sweep down towards them.

The air bus.

It was full of terrified humans now within easy range of the flying Grimm.

Glynda clicked her tongue as she started blasting the incoming flyers with the miniature projectiles in her riding crop.

The easy part of getting here was over. Now the hard part of getting everyone back safely begins.

The first Nevermore Glynda targeted screeched as its head was pelted by dozens of sharp needles, depending on its own size to survive but it broke away, trying to bat the projectiles away from its vulnerable parts.

But that still left three more.

The other Hunters with her opened fire on the Nevermore nearest to the air bus, causing it shriek in pain.

Glynda turned her attention to the Griffon. It was the largest of the four, indicating advanced age and experience.

It would also be the hardest to beat.

But Glynda was a Huntress and she would win against this creature of darkness.

She looked for something bigger to use as a projectile.

A simple brick or a dozen of her needles wouldn't do. It would barely even faze this older Grimm.

No, she needed something like a streetlight, something big and potentially sharp.

Or she could watch as something fast flew up from the streets beneath, into the Griffon and out the other end, killing it and bringing it down. Help was always appreciated.

The fourth Nevermore, on the other side of the ship turned its attention from the easy prey to the Bullhead full of Hunters and screeched before backpedaling in a maneuver Glynda feared.

"Incoming!"

The Grimm bird flung its feathers at the Bullhead, causing the pilot to take jerky maneuvers to try and dodge while the Hunters reached for handholds.

But at this short distance, it wasn't easy to dodge. By the time they had seen the Nevermore start its maneuver, it was past time to dodge.

Glynda tried to keep her feet as feathers flew towards her and hit the Bullhead. To the pilot's credit, most missed the ship. Most of the ones that managed to hit, only hit the Bullhead's armor.

But one errant feather hit Glynda.

"Oof!" came out as her Aura took the all the damage but she still felt the full force of the impact. Force that her grip onto the handrail tried to counter. Unfortunately, the Bullhead was too crowded for her to have a firm grip on the rail.

Glynda found herself flying forwards, her hand's grip broken as she and the feather flew out the door of the Bullhead.

And then she was falling through the sky, narrowly missing the air bus now beside her.

Glynda felt her body automatically twist and turn to get into a good position for the landing.

But the air bus and the Bullhead had been flying low, just above the buildings to avoid the attention of the rouge warship. Glynda only had about one and a half seconds to turn from falling headfirst to feetfirst before she would hit the ground.

She tried to control her tumbling but the ground was coming up too fast. She was going to lose a lot of Aura to this.

Then she came to a sudden jerk in midair, as someone caught her, one arm under her legs and the other behind her back.

Glynda's eyes snapped up to the tanned face and white-haired man who was holding her as he safely landed in a crouch.

"Are you alright?" the man asked, warm and grey but tired eyes looking down at her.

* * *

Shirou watched as the ship flew overhead, a smaller Remnant equivalent of the helicopter escorting it.

It looked like the nearest group of refugees had been rescued. Time to find the next group.

And then four flying Grimm swooped down from the crowded sky to attack.

Shirou stopped, letting his swords disperse now that he was immobile. Grabbing the bow, he reached back into his quiver and noted that he only had about three more large arrows left.

He would have to project some more soon.

But that could wait until after the air bus with its passengers were safe.

Shirou let his mind unite with the target, the large hippogriff-looking creature, only it was in the Grimm colors of black, red, and white.

_Ashibumi._ Shirou quickly got into his stance, carefully placing his feet.

_Dozukiri. _Shirou straightened his body, getting his stance proper.

_Yugamae. _Shirou gripped the bow and stared at his target.

_Uchiokoshi. _Shirou raised the bow above his head in preparation for the next step.

_Hikiwake._ He brought the bow down, bringing the arrow into position to fly to the target.

_Kai. _Shirou finished bringing the bow to the full draw, arrow parallel to his cheek.

_Hanare._ It was almost easy to let the string go and the arrow to fly.

_Zanshin._ Shirou maintained the mentality even as the arrow united with the target.

All that in less than one second. This world had helped him refine his skill as an archer, helping him to become faster than he had ever achieved in Fuyuki.

The hippogriff Grimm didn't even screech as the arrow plowed into and then out of its head, killing it instantly. But there were still a few more Grimm left in the sky threatening the passengers.

Shirou reached back to grab the next arrow, projecting a few more arrows into his quiver and pulling out the one he projected into his hand.

Best to keep his magecraft secret in case someone was watching.

But as he started the next shot, his mind already changing its target, one of the bird Grimm screeched and stopped to fire some feathers at the Bullhead.

And Shirou's heart stopped, his mentality shattering as he saw a fair skinned, blond woman fall out.

He didn't know her.

He didn't recognize her.

But for one second, he saw her blond hair in a bun with the unbound hair flapping in the wind, dressed in a blue and white dress, an invisible sword in hand, and instantly knew that she was important to him.

He was already running towards her at the best speed his reinforced legs could manage and had leaped towards her when he realized that she wasn't wearing a blue dress but a black pencil skirt and a long-sleeved white shirt with a purple cape and the weapon in her hand wasn't an invisible sword but a riding crop full of hair thin needles.

Stupid Archer. Oh, sure, Shirou was grateful for the Archer Card. He wouldn't have been able to save Miyu without it or the Heroic Spirit connected to it. But even now, long after most of the integration between him and Archer had stabilized, Archer's memories occasionally overlaid his own, causing him to see people that had once been important in his alternate's self's life. Such as that brown-haired granddaughter of that one crime chief in one of Mistral's smaller towns. Or this blond gorgeous woman who had a few distant similarities to Archer's Saber.

But Shirou couldn't blame Archer too much for this. After all, he would have tried to catch the woman too when he saw her fall from the sky.

He just wouldn't have felt his heart nearly stop from fear of the beauty being hurt.

* * *

"I'm fine," Glynda said, heart still hammering from the surprise of the fall and subsequent catch.

"Oh good," the man relaxed, face smiling.

He was still holding her in a princess carry against his blue and white casual shirt.

"Ahem?" She coughed, trying to hint to the man that he should let her down.

She was a professional Huntress. She didn't need rescue.

"What?" the man blinked blankly before his eyes lit up in realization. "Oh! I'm sorry. I didn't realize."

He continued apologizing as he carefully let her down, not even hinting of any strain in carrying a full-grown woman in his arms.

"Yes, very well," Glynda dismissed his apologies as she turned to the Bullhead and air bus.

The last of the group of Grimm was dead, killed by the Hunters on the Bullhead as the two ships continued flying on.

They had lost a lot of bullheads to the huge flocks of Nevermore and the rogue Atlas cruiser had helped reduce their numbers too. The defenders couldn't spare many of the remaining Bullheads. If they could, then they would have sent two to guard this air bus.

The pilot had to make a choice between leaving the airbus undefended to pick her up or to continue on with the mission.

Glynda knew what she would have done in the pilot or the Hunters' place. She would have trusted the lone Hunter to be able to survive while they carried on with protecting the civilians.

One life, capable of surviving on its own versus a hundred innocents. It was no contest.

Glynda glanced at the Hunter next to her.

The white-haired but young-looking man was dressed casually in a blue and white long-sleeved shirt and blue jeans. Like he had been out for a stroll when the disaster had started. But he was obviously a Huntsman with his bow and quiver over his shoulder and two large scimitar sheathes at his side.

No one but a Hunter would have such a wide variety of weapons and carry them all on him.

He was also looking at her, eyes bouncing over her, probably looking for her weapon before he raised his head to look down the street at the pair of Atlesian Knights-200s who just turned a corner and were raising their guns to fire.

Glynda raised her crop to prepare to block the incoming rounds when a small, fast blur hit one of the robots, destroying its torso instantly.

The other only fired two shots before another blur destroyed it.

Glynda turned her head to see the man lower his bow.

Well, that was impressive. Glynda knew that a Hunter's compound bow could reach speeds comparable to a bullet but the slower rate of fire and more expensive ammunition meant that most Hunter's would rather use a gun than a bow. Not to mention it was much easier and quicker to train a man to use a gun than it was to train a good bowman.

But the man wasn't using a compound bow. She didn't know what type of bow it was, but it lacked the pulleys that made a compound bow a compound bow. Meaning that the speed of the arrow was due to his strength.

Furthermore, he had shot that bow much faster than she thought he would be able to and hadn't missed the torso of two targets over 100 meters away.

"Good shooting," she complimented before starting off back to the current boundary between Grimm and humanity. "The nearest friendly territory is this way and it will be a bit of a walk."

"Aren't there more people who need to be saved?" he asked as he ran to catch up with her before settling into walking beside her.

Glynda shook her head. "No, that was the last of the wall that still had people near it. The rest of the segments fell either to the betrayal of the Knights on top of the wall, the assaults of the Grimm from the outside or the White Fang from the inside."

"The White Fang is involved?" the man asked, eyes narrowed. "The terrorist organization?"

"Yes," Glynda said tersely, barely holding back her anger. "They are somehow safely transporting Grimm into the city and dropping them off at points where they can do the maximum damage."

The man cursed and Glynda agreed full heartedly.

What were those idiots thinking! Destroying Vale with the Grimm wasn't going to help the Faunus reach equality, it was just going to kill thousands of humans and Faunus! Yes, there was still a lot of prejudice against the Faunus in Vale, but they were still better than Atlas in that regard and the younger generation was more open than the older one! Furthermore, Vale's Hunters _protect_ Menagerie!

But the White Fang didn't care. No, they just wanted people to die so they could feel better about how they were treated. They wanted revenge and were determined to get over the corpses of the innocent.

As a Huntress, Glynda couldn't forgive them. She couldn't forgive the people who she fought to protect that decided that the proper way to live was to act like monsters and turn on each other.

"We should hurry then," the man said, lowering the center of weight in preparation to run.

"No," Glynda refused. "Save your stamina. We'll be fighting all night long before we can repulse the Grimm from the city once more."

The man shook his head. "But if we do then more people will die while we walk."

"And more people will die if we don't have the strength to protect them," Glynda rebutted. "And once we die, the people behind us will die too."

"I know," the man responded. "But they are depending on us to save them."

"Can you fight at this pace for an entire day?" Glynda asked.

The man was silent.

Glynda waited. There had been weirder Semblances. Semblances that could enable a person to fight on for days on end.

"No," he said reluctantly.

"It will take hours for the people to calm down and the negativity to stop drawing in more Grimm," Glynda reminded the Huntsman. "Until then, we will have to fight nearly continuously."

"But they will grieve more if they lose their loved ones," Shirou said. "Wouldn't it be better if they didn't have to grieve?"

"Yes," Glynda said tightly. She knew where he was coming from. She didn't want for people to suffer losses either. But she also knew that if they died from exhausting themselves by rushing in then the people behind them would die soon after. "But again, once we die, we can't protect anyone. Our duty to them requires us to take care of ourselves, even if we hate what we have to do."

The white-haired man looked like he would disagree.

How old was he? His hair was pure white, indicating he had many years on him, possibly as many as Ozpin if not more. But his face was unlined like he was younger than his hair indicated. And he acted like a young, hot-headed Hunter.

On the other hand, Glynda didn't know what experiences he had. Did his team die on him because he wasn't fast enough? Were they still alive? Was the man young but his hair turned white prematurely from the stress of being a Hunter? Or was he old and simply had the good genes to look good?

Glynda wished she had that luck. She was approaching her mid thirties and even Aura couldn't stop the wear of time. The man's skin looked to be a few years younger than her, probably just past his 30th birthday.

Then she felt the tremble of something heavy approaching and they both turned as one to face it.

The white head of the King Taijitu hissed as it approached.

It was quickly silenced as a thrown sword pierced the roof of its mouth, cutting into the brain.

And then Glynda's Semblance powered blast squashed the middle, causing the black head to rise up in pain only for one of her needles to blow though its head at high speed.

Glynda watched as the Grimm snake started to turn into smoke and turned away to find the stranger eying her, surprised.

"Well?" She asked, eyebrow raised, crossing her arms and tapping one finger.

"How did you do that?" he asked.

"It is my Semblance," she answered. Deeming the question as unimportant, she started walking onwards.

"What's a Semblance?" he asked blankly.

Glynda stopped.

And turned around to reexamine the man.

His unlined, sculpted face wasn't joking.

"Are you serious?" she asked, hoping that her emergency partner was simply trying a very bad joke at a bad time. Her eyes narrowed. "Are you a Hunter? Who are you?"

She belatedly realized that she didn't know his name nor had she ever seen him before.

"I'm Shirou Emiya," he introduced himself, holding out one hand to shake. "And I'm not a hunter though I have hunted before. And pardon me, I should have asked this before but we might have been slightly busy with the Grimm, what's your name?"

Glynda closed her eyes.

A civilian. She had a civilian with her. Not a fellow Huntsman but someone who didn't even have their Aura unlocked.

"Very well," she sighed as she reached out and shook his hand. This had just gotten a lot tougher. "I'm Glynda Goodwitch, teacher at Beacon Academy. Now let's get going. We don't have all day and as you try to remind me, we are in a time crunch."

The man nodded and followed after her.

Well, this was now a solo escort assignment of a civilian through Grimm territory.

Hopefully he wouldn't take too much energy to protect.

* * *

The pair walked on, leaving the residential district of houses and apartments to enter a commercial area full of shops and stores, keeping silent as they strained their senses for any hint of the Grimm or Atlas's rogue robots.

They had already encountered dozens and dispatched them, either with an arrow from Shirou's bow or her own telekinetic Semblance.

CRASH!

The sound of something tipping over and falling to the floor caused them both to wheel around from the three-way intersection they were at towards one of Vale's supermalls, front door completely gone, walls and windows bearing holes and the ceiling damaged.

The mall had a large courtyard between it and the street the pair were walking down, with numerous benches, tables, patches of grass, trees and lightposts scattered between concrete paths. Numerous objects were in ruins, toppled over, or crushed from the surge of Grimm and there was signs of blood where bodies had been killed before being eaten.

_Should I go in? _Glynda debated. _There could be someone inside or it could be Grimm. If it is someone, I should investigate and escort them. If it is Grimm, I shouldn't risk it while guarding Shirou. He is unable to survive even one serious blow from a Grimm._

The Grimm Creep rounding the corner of the mall answered her debate on what to do as she instinctively slammed it with shards of broken glass from the ruined doors and windows.

The Creep screeched as it died, the glass shards flaying it to pieces.

Both Glynda and Shirou's eyes went wide as dozens of answering howls came from inside the mall.

The mall which, now that she thought about it, looked like a Goliath had walked right through the entire building.

The mall which was now disgorging Grimm like a vending machine on overdrive.

Glynda immediately started using the nearby glass and rubble to kill Grimm, throwing the debris back and forth across the entrance. Her needles hidden inside her weapon were good but the speeds she used tended to wear them out rather fast. Better to use heavier projectiles as they would survive multiple impacts. Fortunately, it was easy to find sturdier stuff than her razor thin needles.

And then, she felt it.

The rumbling of the earth as something heavy walked towards them. And then the darkness of the mall _shifted _and the patches of white light rippled.

Across all three floors of the mall simultaneously.

Glynda's heart nearly stopped and she held back her desire to whimper or scowl. She wasn't sure if her fear or her irritation was stronger, as she realized that what she had taken for the lights being out was a massive freaking Goliath!

What kind of luck did it take to wander past a Goliath at a supermall!

Her distraction didn't stop her from noticing absent-mindedly a pair of Beowolves that managed to avoid her kill-zone and then killing one of them while Shirou shot the other.

Okay, what should she do? What could she do?

How do you kill a Goliath?

She didn't recall. She couldn't remember hearing of the last time someone managed to kill one. She just remembered that they were old enough to learn that constantly fighting humans was detrimental so they waited on the borders of the kingdom and avoided conflict while traveling in herds.

But how did they fight? What was their abilities?

Glynda took a deep breath to calm herself down.

Goliaths would have intelligence for one of their abilities. Group tactics naturally would result from there. They also were rather passive and patient. But apparently not now because it was inside Vale and that was very aggressive.

Another advantage was their Size, Glynda realized as she stared up at the head as the head emerged from a hole in the ceiling as its tusks swept the second floor of the supermall clear.

But this was what Peter Port was for! He remembered the last time someone killed a Goliath. This was the sort of thing he taught!

Calm down, Glynda reminded herself. They were killable. Otherwise, they would have already overran all the kingdoms rather than wait for a moment like now.

Glynda guessed that the last person to kill a Goliath probably dropped a missile on them or used an Atlas battleship. The Grimm's size would mean that a normal weapon simply wouldn't be able to penetrate deep enough to harm it. You couldn't kill it if your weapon was too small to hit anything vital after all.

Or was that what she remembered from her own Grimm Studies class when she was a student?

Glynda wished she could remember. But she had presented on Wyvern Grimm instead of Goliaths for her team's rare Grimm presentation project.

Right now, she found herself wishing she had presented on Goliaths instead as she stared up at the large, malevolent and intelligent Grimm.

The thud of a Grimm paw on the ground and an arrow being released shook her from her shock.

She couldn't afford to let her exhaustion and surprise overcome like this. She was Glynda Goodwitch, a professional Huntress, professor of Beacon, and she had faced down worse foes than this before.

Admittedly, she had never been the only Huntress at those times but what other choice did she have? She could run but that would leave the civilian behind and the Grimm chasing her. Not a good choice when all the fighters in this city were busy fighting other Grimm, rogue Atlas robots, or the White Fang. And this deep in Grimm territory, she was more likely to run into more opponents then allies.

It would only lead to her being surrounded. Her only option was to fight here.

"Keep them off me!" she snapped to the man next to her before she turned her attention back to the Goliath.

It brayed once and the flow of Grimm coming out from under its belly into her Semblance created kill zone ceased.

Glynda clicked her tongue as she saw the smaller Grimm start burst through the mall's side doors and windows.

It looked like her telekinetic kill-zone wouldn't be worth it now that the Goliath was giving orders to the other Grimm to avoid it.

No, she would need to depend on Shirou's archery skills to kill the Grimm while she helped out where she could.

And amidst the fighting, she would also need to take care of the Goliath.

But how? Each massive and rare Grimm was a team or a multi-team effort to take care of. The Wyvern had taken two Hunter teams specifically chosen for their Semblances to counter it and even then, they had only buried it and put it to sleep as they couldn't manage to kill it without losing more members.

But for the Goliath, she was ill equipped. Her weapon wouldn't be much good as her needles were too thin and small to cause damage to anything as big and sturdy as the Goliath would be.

Instead, she would need a different weapon. A long one. A sharp one. A big one.

Her eyes darted over the surroundings.

Bench, billboard, flagstone, door, Beowolf, streetlight.

Wait.

Glynda waved her crop at the Beowolf while feeding her Aura into a Wind Dust crystal, pushing the air in front of the leaping Beowolf and throwing it backwards at the Goliath, while its claws were still extended.

WHAP.

The Goliath quickly smacked it away with its trunk, splattering the Beowolf against the nearby wall, instantly killing the smaller Grimm.

Yes, that was what she had figured. The trunk was strong enough to protect itself with.

Meaning that frontal attacks wouldn't work.

Glynda thrust her crop forward at the broken flagstones beneath the Goliath's feet, causing the stones to rise up in a spray of stone shards at full force against the underbelly.

The Goliath looked down, noting what she had done, but returned to staring at her, watching her every move.

Glynda tsked. Too durable. It had felt the impact but it obviously hadn't penetrated, nor had the Goliath even risen a little off the ground.

Meaning that she couldn't blast air at it. The Grimm was too massive to be hurt by blunt force attacks. Heavy precision attacks with sharp points would be needed, possibly multiple strikes against the same spot.

This would be a challenge.

* * *

Shirou noted the large elephant like Grimm engage in a stare-off with Ms. Goodwitch even as he readjusted his stance to better protect her as he fired arrow after arrow at the Grimm which were spreading out to surround them.

It looked like Ms. Goodwitch was going to take the big Grimm on her own.

All right, he could handle all the little ones. If she wanted to handle the big one on her own then he had no problem with it.

After all, it was only a big Grimm. Nothing challenging to kill if you were willing to bring out a strong Noble Phantasm.

And Glynda appeared to be a magus since she had been trying to lecture him on the magecraft system of this world. Shirou hadn't encountered a magus of Remnant before but it sounded like they had taken a different name upon themselves than the term 'magus'. And Ms. Goodwitch probably had some kind of specialized spell or Mystery that could kill it, developed over generations of war against the Grimm.

Shirou had slain bigger Grimm in Mistral before and some of the weapons he had seen hanging on walls in Mistral had participated in killing large Grimm. These Grimm weren't as hard as Berserker Heracles had been, especially with his stockpile of lives and immunity to attacks below B rank.

But this Grimm might have strange abilities. From what he had seen, Grimm were this world's equivalent of Phantasmal species, with the strongest ones approaching Divine Phantasmal rank. They sometimes had unusual tricks and unexpected abilities.

But many heroes had made their legend off killing Phantasmals.

Dragons, giants, manticores, chimera, even divine spirits, you name it, a hero had beaten or killed one.

And Shirou's inherited armory had all their weapons, ripe with their experience and with properties lethal to both the original monsters and these Grimm versions.

Besides, if the elephant Grimm had special significance to Ms. Goodwitch, it would be rude to interfere in her fight. And there were plenty of other Grimm to focus on.

One such, a big bear-like Grimm, bigger than the other Grimm of the same species roared right before Shirou's arrow plunged through the eye until even the fletching disappeared inside its head.

But the sound had been given and as that Grimm fell, dissolving to smoke-

-the rest of the Grimm charged.

Shirou readied himself to project a storm of blades.

He couldn't use the sphere of Kanshou and Bakuya with Ms. Goodwitch so close. He preferred Kanshou and Bakuya for crowd control as he could project a few and keep them moving in the air around him. But he preferred not killing his companion even more. But without the Married Blades attractive properties, he would have to trace and use new weapons every time a Grimm came close.

But that just meant that it would take more energy to use different weapons for the same purpose.

Good thing he had so many to choose from.

* * *

Glynda glanced away from the Goliath as the horde charged at her from all directions.

This wasn't good. Shirou wouldn't be able to handle so many Grimm at once. Without an Aura, and with so many, he wouldn't be able to survive.

She had to help. But she also had to take care of the big threat.

If the Goliath decided to get involved in the fighting, especially after it had seen her abilities, it would be bad. The smarter Grimm would be able to figure out how to kill her without risking its own death.

But even as Glynda turned her head and waved her crop, riddling the hordes with projectiles that penetrated into the brain through the Grimm's young and thin skulls, she saw weapons, finely crafted weapons, in hundreds of types and varieties, more than even she had seen before.

And each one flung itself through the air forward, hitting a charging Grimm and killing it dead.

She paused.

The Goliath brayed.

The Grimm stopped.

Shirou just grabbed an arrow and shot another Grimm. Like that had just been another Tuesday for him.

But it was enough for the Goliath to call out again.

And the smaller Grimm charged.

Glynda looked back at the giant, relieved that even if the man guarding her back didn't know what a Semblance was, he at least had his own and knew how to use it. And therefore, he had Aura.

Glynda focused her effort on trying to grab a portion of the roof, that part where it had broken into a point. If she could grab that and throw it down at full speed with gravity helping, she probably could penetrate the spine.

And paralyzing or crippling the Goliath would be as good as a victory. It wouldn't be able to pursue them, and they could escape.

She would take whatever she could get against a Goliath.

* * *

Glynda panted, glaring angrily at the Goliath, whose malicious eyes stared balefully but patiently back at her.

What did it take to kill one of these!?

She had thrown everything she could at it and nothing had even pushed it! Even grabbing a ran-over street light, throwing it high up into the atmosphere and then accelerating it as it dropped to within her Semblance's range until it penetrated through the Goliath's back until one end came out of its belly, hadn't killed it!

That had been her best idea yet. The other streetlights were ignored as long it didn't come near its head or limbs. Yet when she had rammed a bench part way through its head, it had just ignored it. As if it wasn't even touching its brain.

The survivability of the Goliath was ridiculous!

Another few twangs of a bow string indicated that Shirou had shot some more Grimm. A second later, a dissolving Alpha Beowolf flew past her, its inertia not stopped by the fact that an arrow had punctured through its eye.

The man was strange, she thought as she glanced over, seeing him unharmed save for a cut across the cheek. Probably from one of the several surrounding and deceased Beowolf's bony spikes glancing across him.

Wait.

Glynda's eyes snapped back, seeing the lightly injured Shirou surrounded by dissolving Grimm who had tried to attack in the last wave.

Shirou Emiya was bleeding. From a cut that hadn't been there before the fight had started.

Glynda felt a stab of worry before she mentally rebuked herself. They had been fighting for what felt like hours now, wiping out wave after wave of Grimm while Glynda had tried to see what could be effective against the Goliath.

Her large Aura, already drained from the large amount of fighting before encountering the Goliath, now was running low after the long stint of fighting the Goliath and the other Grimm. Shirou's must have ran out already.

Which wasn't very good. The two of them were weakening and the Grimm kept on replenishing their numbers as more and more arrived each minute.

Admittedly, they probably had cleared the surrounding _districts_ of Grimm as they had answered the bugles of the Goliath. But the lone Goliath was still alive, even with half a dozen light poles sticking out of its back and sides. And it still had a dozen Alpha Creeps, Ursa Major, and Alpha Beowolves left. Shirou had prioritized the Nevermores and Griffons until the Goliath had just stopped calling them down as the man had never missed a shot against the airborne menaces, making them useless as they would die as soon as they got close.

But now Shirou was out of Aura. Without his Semblance of conjuring swarms of realistic-looking weapons, the odds would turn against them.

Glynda felt her sweat evaporate off her skin as she considered retreating. The Grimm were devasted, the Goliath probably slowed. But there were still a dozen Grimm left, all of which were older, more intelligent and more dangerous than their fallen Grimm brethren.

"Are you out?" she asked, eyes on the surrounding Grimm, who were prowling around, never stopping.

"No," Shirou answered as he drew another arrow from his quiver and nocked it. "Still have enough arrows left for these. Do you need any help with the elephant one?"

"What?" Glynda blinked.

He was out of Aura but thought that he could help with Goliath?

"Let's kill the other Grimm then retreat. I can't kill it," she decided. "And without- "

The sound of a bugle cut her off and Glynda wheeled around to face the Goliath.

It was raising its trunk and sounded again. Only this time it was louder than the previous one.

An answering bugle came from behind her and Glynda felt her blood drain from her face.

She slowly turned around, hoping that she was wrong.

But the herd of Goliaths walking towards her proved that she was right.

Reinforcements.

The Goliath had been calling for the members of its herd. It was also a small, _young_ Goliath. Probably only a thousand years old.

And now the rest of the herd was coming, with lesser Grimm yipping at their heels.

"We have to run!" She yelled as she used another drop of her Aura to power her Semblance as she took a few more needles from her crop and used them to drop the Grimm guarding the streets off to the side. "We can't take-!"

The Goliath sounded again, drowning out her voice.

"Let's go!" She yelled as she started to run.

Then the earth started shaking as the Goliath they had been fighting charged.

Glynda wished she had never fallen off the Bullhead. They would have all lived.

The oncoming herd picked up the pace, their combined footsteps causing the earth to shake.

Glynda stopped as she realized that the man was saying something that she couldn't make out through the sound of a charging Goliath herd and the shaking of the earth at the charging footsteps of the single Goliath.

"What are you doing!" She yelled, wheeling around and staring at the man who had instead chosen to shoot and kill the remaining small Grimm and was now holding the bow in position to aim at the getting ever-closer single Goliath, the other hand gripping nothing but air. "We can't fight this many-!"

She cut off as Shirou finished whatever he was saying and a very strange sword appeared in his hands.

It was like a drill, with a single line spinning down in a spiral from the tip down to the hilt. A second copy had landed into the ground beside him, sticking up like an odd fencepost.

Then the sword-drill started to warp and flatten, turning itself longer and longer while thinning itself until it reached the man's longbow as he notched it onto the string.

Glynda stared at the man, wondering why he hadn't healed his scratch if he still had some Aura left, enough to conjure up two more weapons.

And what was going on with his weapon? Was it a sword? Was it an arrow? Or was it something else?

Shirou just aimed the weapon at the solo Goliath who was towering close enough to blot out the fractured moon and said one line.

"I am the bone of my sword. Caladbolg."

BOOOOOOOOM!

Glynda's Aura kicked in to protect her ears from the eruption of sound and air as the oddest arrow she had ever seen disappeared from his bow as soon as he let go of the string.

Glynda blinked. She shifted her eyes to look at the single, now non-moving Goliath that would have been on top of Shirou in about a second before squishing him flat in the next second.

She blinked again.

The upper half of the Goliath was gone. Not dead, not dissolving into smoke like the feet, just gone. As was half of the mall itself except for the segments that hadn't been directly behind the Goliath and a few feet of wall at the bottom.

Then angry bugles of the herd behind her reminded her that there was more than just the one.

She wheeled around to see the herd of Goliaths start to split up as they tried to stop their charge towards the one who had just killed their lost herd member. But their large size and mass meant that they couldn't stop the momentum of a full-out charge easily. The smaller accompanying Grimm didn't even try and were just barreling ahead of their largest brethren.

But, unlike Glynda, Shirou hadn't stopped to admire his handiwork. And his second drill-sword was already twisted into an arrow and on his drawn bowstring.

"Caladbolg."

BOOOOOOOO-OOOOOOOOM!

Glynda was left wide-eyed as the second missile, not only broke through the sound barrier like the first but then exploded in the midst of where the herd was, releasing a burst of bright light and fire that she could see even through her reflexively closed eyelids.

The sound ran on as the fire kept on shining, like a god had decided to release his fury in a small space.

And when the world stopped shining and the sound returned from the deafening fury of an angry Dust missile, Glynda opened her eyes.

And stared at the huge black cloud of smoke rising from the large crater that the herd of Goliaths used to be at.

How?

Glynda had seen Dust missiles before. She had relayed Ozpin's orders to use them at a horde of Grimm that was advancing on a village when there weren't enough Hunters available to defend the village.

That arrow-sword-drill object was not a Dust missile.

So how did it match the payout of one!

Shirou turned to face her and stopped as he looked at her slack-jawed face which was staring at him in amazement.

"Ah," he smiled sheepishly, hand scratching the back of his white hair. One cheek still bore the red and bleeding cut on it but he looked fine as if he hadn't launched a supersonic missile from his bow. And missiles weren't meant to be launched from bowstrings! The back blast alone should have broken his Aura not to mention the bow, his arm, and burned his face off! "Sorry about the mall and the street."

"What was that?" she asked flatly, still in disbelief and denial that the man who had been out of Aura still was capable of making two weapons, each capable of killing a Goliath. "What was that?!"

"Well, my normal weapons didn't have enough reach to hit anything vital so-" he shrugged, big black bow in hand. "I had to pull out something big in order to keep it off of you before we could retreat."

"Keep it off of me," she repeated.

Keep it off of her.

Keep it off of her!

He could one-shot a Goliath, could do it all along and only had done so in order to 'keep it off of her'!

"Why didn't you tell me you could do that!" she yelled.

"Well, you looked like you had a plan and needed time to work it out. Probably an idea of how to take care of the other threats. Maybe an idea of how to use the big Grimm against either the robots or the White Fang," the man said, dismissing the Goliath as only a big Grimm. "But then you decided to run when the others showed up, so I figured that the plan was a bust."

"You mean to tell me you could have dealt with that Goliath by yourself and didn't because you thought I wanted to use it against the other enemies," Glynda repeated disbelievingly.

"Well, yeah," the man blinked. "And after you tried to drop the roof of the supermall onto it, I figured I was wrong and that it might just have been personal for you."

"You thought I wanted to fight a Goliath!" she screamed.

"Why else would you have told me to only keep it off of you?" the man said, tilting his head curiously. "And just to be clear, Goliath is the name for the big elephant Grimm, right?"

"I didn't want to fight it!" she stomped over to scream into his face. "Goliaths are juggernauts! I couldn't cut deeply enough into one to kill it! And you don't encounter them out on their own like this! Furthermore, they are intelligent enough to decide to wait for the opportune moment! And they travel in herds!"

She gestured out to the street-wide crater where the herd used to be.

"But this one was alone," he pointed out helpfully. "Got separated."

"The entire situation is abnormal!" Glynda actually threw up her arms. "Never has Vale faced an attack like this! Never have Goliaths broken through the wall before! Never has the White Fang decided to use Grimm as weapons before this year! Never has anyone hacked Atlas's Knights before and turned them against people! Never has a Maiden had their-!"

She broke off as she realized she was about to spill secret information.

Glynda closed her eyes, breathing in and out, trying to get her emotions back under control.

Fortunately, as a Huntress, she was used to the emotional control that was needed to fight the creatures of Grimm. Even if she had started the day more tired and sleepy and stressed than awake. Controlling her emotions in the field was second nature to her.

Unless it was out of left field like what had just happened.

She opened her green eyes and looked Shirou in his warm but slightly confused eyes.

"Why didn't you tell me you had your Aura unlocked?" she asked in a calmer but long-suffering tone.

"What's aura?" he asked instead. "You say it like it is a door rather than an energy given off by lifeforms. Or is this a difference in languages?"

Glynda regarded him.

It was possible for a person to naturally unlock their own Aura. It was actually rather common. But usually people who unlocked their own Aura were either recruited into being Hunters or snatched into lives of crime or had someone who explained what was going on.

Well, it looked like she was the one who was going to have to explain it to him.

"Aura is the power we Hunters and you use to fight Grimm-" she started off before cutting off as the man furrowed his brow.

"I'm sorry. I'm also a magus but I'm not a Hunter. I don't know your field of thaumatology," Shirou apologetically said. "I use a different type than Semblance and Aura so I don't know what those words mean to you. Could you please explain?"

Glynda stared wide-eyed.

A magus.

An ancient word for a magician. A magician like Ozpin with real magic, not just a Semblance.

"Can't be," she whispered before she shook herself.

No, he couldn't be a magician. Magic was lost when the gods left Remnant. The only fragments left belonged to Ozpin, Salem, or the Four Maidens.

He probably had accidentally unlocked his Aura and Semblance without knowing what it was and just assumed it was magic.

But, and her eyes fell again upon the scrape on his cheek, Shirou was bleeding from the Beowolf's bone spike.

And you couldn't use a Semblance when you ran out of Aura.

He could have chosen to not use his Aura. Experienced Huntsman could control their instinct to use Aura to block damage and heal it, letting their soul preserve its strength while the body bled.

What if he just had that degree of natural talent and just thought that his Aura and Semblance was magic? That would fit all the facts. And that would preclude something crazy like magic returning to the world without Ozpin or Salem giving their gift out.

"Mr. Emiya," she lectured, laying one hand on her hip. "What you are doing is called a Semblance. It is a unique manifestation of a person's innate power and is a more tangible manifestation of Aura, the power of a person's soul. Every person has one Semblance that gives them additional abilities. It is _not_ magic."

He started at that.

"If you were a Huntsman, you would have been trained to know how to use your Aura and Semblance more effectively and would know what it is," she continued. "Your semblance appears to be a creation type that you use for your swords and-"

She stopped as Shirou picked up some shattered concrete and transformed it in front of her eyes into a stone arrowhead without a telltale shimmer of light and energy.

"I am a spell-caster," he reiterated to her gaped shock. "I use a different thaumatology system than Semblances and Aura. Not sure if I could even use Semblance and Aura to tell the truth. I'm pretty bad at using different systems of magic."

Glynda stared at the arrowhead.

This wasn't possible. His Semblance involved conjuring physical entities. It shouldn't be able to alter physical matter too. Not without Dust being used.

Although, it was strange how it didn't have any light effects other than some shimmers of blue as it appeared or disappeared.

Every Semblance, the light of the soul, had some sort of light effects when the soul reached out and interacted with reality unless it was a stealth type of Semblance that hid its own light.

Yet his weapons had shimmered into existence. No sudden glow or any form of light. No telltale flash either and weapon creation Semblances would not be stealth types.

Maybe he had secretly used Dust? Dust reacted in interesting ways to Semblances and the combination of Dust and Semblance was well known to alter the effect of one's Semblance. That could explain how his Semblance was able to conjure weapons yet still change matter.

But she hadn't seen any Dust on him. And a quick brush of her telekinesis, to which the man immediately tensed up at, revealed that any Dust he had on his civilian clothes was inert if there at all. And she could see the gash on his cheek where blood was dripping down. And that cut had happened _before_ he had created the last weapon so any Aura he would have had would have gone into either preventing the damage or healing it, especially as there are no more Grimm around now. And she knew that a Semblance couldn't be used if the user had no Aura.

Could it be? Could he be telling the truth?

Did Remnant have another magician on it? Or was he a good fake?

Glynda didn't know. She didn't know magic, just being a Huntress and a professor. And Shirou's abilities and equipment pointed to not using Dust or Aura. And she knew that that she still had much to learn about Remnant and everything else.

But she did know one thing. Ozpin needed to know. He could make the determination of if this was magic or just Shirou's Semblance or a usage of Dust or some new form of technology.

And if she was wrong about it being a Semblance, and it was genuine, real magic, then Ozpin could make the decisions from there. And if she was right, the man had a natural talent that needed to be trained and refined.

Either way, it would be irresponsible of her to let him wander out of sight.

* * *

**A.N.**

**We don't know what abilities a Goliath has besides its massive size. So I decided to make it a juggernaut. Something that just plain won't die and can't be stopped. However, the quote of "what humans/Faunus lack in strength, they make up in will" means that even these juggernauts can die to normal Hunters. Just not easily and definitely not solo unless you have a well-suited Semblance.**

**As for Glynda's fighting, I thought to make Glynda's crop into a weapon fully capable of utilizing her Semblance. The hairs of the crop include needles that she can detach with her Semblance and fire as remote-controlled projectiles, allowing her to fight in areas where she doesn't have ammunition lying around. Each crop contains something in the ballpark of a thousand such needles, making it so that she doesn't ever need to worry about running out of ammunition. Running out of Aura though is a more realistic concern for her, something that she takes care of by daily working to increase her efficiency in using her Semblance and increasing how much Aura she has, even though the gains are nearly negligible by this point.**

**And she does keep a few extra crops around just in case she runs low in one crop, allowing her to switch to a full one if she thinks she'll need a lot of missiles. The crop is also rated for close-range melee combat, all in all making it a very expensive weapon made by the finest weapon makers on Remnant. Not to mention she can detach the various needles in close quarters combat and make it impossible to dodge.**

**In addition, Glynda also has mastered the versions of her semblance that result from combining her Semblance with Dust.**

**I am still working out what each one can do but right now, Earth Dust allows her to repair solids (thus allowing her to do her feats of repairing ruined structures or objects). Fire dust allows her to do pyrokinesis. Steam Dust combined with Ice Dust allows her to do that storm she conjured up in volume 1, episode 1. Glynda can produce barriers by using Hard-Light Dust. Wind Dust allows her to do blasts of air without any light betraying where her projectile is. Glynda prefers using Dust Crystals over the powder form and has straps under her clothing keeping various types of Dust near her at all times, especially Hard Light Dust and Earth Dust. **

**If there is something you can think of that would explain how Glynda has so many varied abilities without using the idea of her being a Maiden, I'll be happy to hear them. Brainstorming is easier with multiple people.**

**And Shirou's reason for not knowing about Aura and Semblances is pretty similar to Jaune's.**


	3. Chapter 3: The Sheathing of a Sword

Chapter 3: Sheathing a Sword

Less than half an hour of walking later, in which Ms. Goodwitch declared that she wanted Shirou to meet her boss, some guy named Ozpin, and having successfully bullied Shirou into agreeing, Shirou looked a robot in the face.

And shot another carbon fiber arrow into its chest, rupturing its electronics and crashing it to the ground before moving onto the next arrow and robot.

Next to him, Ms. Goodwitch had made another purple barrier, blocking the shots of the robots, before firing more of her small needles in her crop and destroying the smaller robots.

However, the big boy wasn't so easy. The large, two lane wide robot was charging at the two of them, energy guns firing only for Glynda to block them again with her mystical barrier-shield.

Shirou traced a plain sword-arrow, nothing notable about it other than he could fire it from Archer's bow without breaking it to pieces and that it was cheap to project.

But his Od, his magical energy, was very low from overpowering the second Caladbolg. He needed cheap weapons if he wanted to continue to fight.

And somewhere in Vale, people were dying. They needed a hero to save them.

A pity that a villain like him, who had sacrificed a world to save his sister, was part of the group of heroes who were fighting to defend them.

But there wasn't that much difference between a hero and a villain, Shirou sardonically thought as the sword flew through the air and smashed the head of the large robot, causing it to fall. In combat, they are practically the same. Both kill their opponents so that the people behind them will live.

As the crash of the last large automated robot sounded through the street, Shirou cocked his head as he heard a distant but loud roar. Loud enough to be heard over the sounds of distant gunfire.

Beside him, Glynda paled and whispered, barely loud enough for Shirou to hear. "No."

Shirou turned to face her, hands hovering, ready to trace and grab Kanshou and Bakuya.

"No," she said again, staring out to where the roar had come from.

"What is it?" Shirou said as he glanced at where she was staring. "Is there a dangerous robot or Grimm somewhere nearby?"

"A Wyvern," she said, horror in her voice.

Shirou stilled.

"A wyvern?" he asked as he reinforced his eyes to better see, eyes scanning the night sky for the Magical Beast. "Like a member of a lesser species of dragons?"

Wyverns were dangerous foes. They were weaker than most dragons and the majority of wyverns never even made it past the Monstrous category of Magical Beasts. But most people wouldn't dare fight a wyvern as it was still significantly stronger than the average person or magus.

Weaker than a true dragon was a very, very broad category with the majority of life form falling under that classification.

Admittedly, Shirou did have Balmung, Gram, Arondight, Ascalon and Georgios's spear, but he didn't have any of them prepared as arrows.

Then again, Archer had almost never fought dragons as they usually weren't a threat to humanity. No threat, no need to make a missile to kill one, no dragon killing arrow to inherit.

And besides, if a dragon was trying to kill people, then Archer had several weapons, each infused with the might of a dragon-slaying legend to deal with one in closer combat.

The problem was, Shirou didn't have enough Od left in him to fire more than one good strike of any dragon-slaying weapon. He couldn't afford to miss if he tried.

"No, not a dragon," Glynda corrected. "A Grimm Wyvern. A flying Grimm, capable of making new Grimm from the black ichor that falls off its body."

"A Grimm that makes other Grimm?" Shirou asked, wincing as he finally spotted the Grimm Wyvern, its red, black and white armless body definitely matching both of the profiles of a wyvern and a Grimm. "I can see that that _might_ be problematic."

Especially if it was this world's equivalent of a dragon. It certainly bore a resemblance to the wyverns of legend.

Shirou started reviewing the dragon-slaying weapons for usage. Ascalon and Arondight were melee dragon slaying weapons, depending on St. George and Lancelot's speed and toughness to get in close. Siegfried's Balmung was a bit too powerful for Shirou's low od reserves to project and then use right now. And the dragon was too far away for him to throw St. George's spear or chuck Sigurd's Gram at it.

"We thought it was dead. That they had killed it after burying it under tons of rock while it was asleep," Glynda said, breathing getting faster and faster in her terror. "They were heroes for stopping it. They managed to save Vale."

"And now it is back," Shirou said grimly, drawing his bow, preparing to project one of Gilgamesh's low-ranking Noble Phantasms to test the strength of the Grimm.

"Yes," Glynda said as she fought her fear to get herself back under control.

"And too far away for me to hit," Shirou said, calculating how far he would need to shoot to hit it. Archer could do 4 kilometers but Shirou needed a lesser distance to be certain of a hit. And the dragon was still over 60 kilometers away.

A snort of laughter reached him and he glanced towards the beautiful woman who was covering her mouth while shaking.

"My apologies," she said, trying to restrain her laughter. "But it is about as easy to kill as a Goliath. It is flying, fast, and never alone for long. Plus it is at least a hundred- no, must be fifty kilometers from here now. But…" she trailed off, obviously remembering how Shirou had killed an entire herd of Goliaths.

If only he hadn't created a crater the size of the street in the process. It would take a lot of cement to fix that.

Poor road repair workers.

Shirou redirected his thoughts from the mess he made on the city to focus on the incoming figure of the Wyvern whose image had already more than doubled in size since Shirou had first spotted it.

"Yeah," Shirou agreed. "If it is anything like a dragon, I probably will need one of my most powerful weapons to even fight it. And I don't have the time to turn one of those swords into an arrow."

Not to mention turning a weapon into an arrow capable of being fired by Archer's bow was a process of trial and error, likely to end up with the weapon exploding as something went wrong and the weapon decided to become a Broken Noble Phantasm because the alteration had turned out incompatible with the weapon's nature.

"Are there real-life dragons?" Glynda asked curiously.

"They exist even though no one has seen one for generations," Shirou informed her. "They like to keep to themselves and to them, killing humans isn't much different from us killing an ant."

"I see," Glynda swallowed. "Well, more relevantly, can you kill the Wyvern? I don't think I can, especially after the earlier fights drained most of my Aura."

"The possibility exists," Shirou said, keeping his eye on the dragon. "The problem is, nothing I can do has enough range to reach it from here and still be effective. I can try to make one into an arrow but that type of experimentation tends to be rather explosive and best done under controlled circumstances."

"Ah," Glynda winced as she eyed the surroundings. They were pretty close to people as they could hear the screams of terrified civilians, soldiers and White Fang as they received wounds from each other or Grimm or Atlas's robots. "Well, if you do see a chance to take it out, do it. With the Wyvern on the battlefield, we can't win until it is down."

"Got it," Shirou said as he projected five plain nano-edge blades and shot them off at a line of robots that had just turned onto their street. "But it'll have to get pretty close for me to succeed and I'm running low on energy myself."

"How close?"

"About a hundred meters," Shirou estimated the range of Saint Georgios's spear and Balmung.

Glynda hissed at the distance.

Yeah, Shirou agreed with her. Against a flying foe, that was practically melee range. But he didn't have enough energy to pull out multiple tries. He would need to succeed on an early strike.

And they were inside the city. If the Wyvern got close to them, it would have already passed by hundreds, no, thousands of civilians.

Shirou frowned as he realized something.

"The Wyvern's veering away from us," he warned. "Headed east."

"The east?" Glynda repeated as she frowned. Shirou didn't know the map of Vale that well. Maybe there was something that it wanted in the east? "Why the east? Only a few districts and Beacon are east of here."

"Don't know," Shirou said, shrugging. "But unless we move that direction, I won't be able to hit it."

Ms. Goodwitch hesitated before nodding as the two started walking forward again. "Alright. We'll try to get our hands on a Bullhead to catch up with it. We can't chase it on the ground, otherwise we'll just waste all our strength chasing it around."

A burst of gunfire sounded from the corner they were about to turn. Glynda readied her weapon and Shirou grabbed Kanshou and Bakuya. He needed their boost to physical resistance to survive gunfire.

And then he charged out into the midst of the street, determined to take any hostiles by surprise.

"No, wait!" Ms. Goodwitch called after him. Shirou didn't bother to obey.

The fighting was in front of him, lines of robots out in the open, trying to gun down soldiers crouched behind whatever cover they could find, mostly stones and rubble from the nearby buildings, though a few soldiers were huddling behind some large, battered and pockmarked shields.

For Shirou, this was target practice with all the people that needed to be saved behind cover.

Shirou threw Kanshou and Bakuya, aiming for the Married Blades to hit the robots at the ends before their attraction to each other pulled them towards the center.

The two Noble Phantasms curved through the air, not stopped by the inferior metals of modern Atlas.

Shirou waited for the right moment before projecting copies into his hands, causing the already thrown weapons to arc back into the lines of robots towards their new copies.

And then the androids were turning around to face him, guns at the ready.

Shirou reinforced his nerves and arms, increasing his reaction speed as he prepared to deflect the bullets.

Fortunately, the robots had very good shooting algorithms. As long as Shirou guarded his vitals with the two falchions, not a single shot would get past his defense.

But the sudden purple barrier made that a moot point as all the bullets deflected off the just appeared shield.

"What were you thinking!" Ms. Goodwitch rebuked loudly and worriedly from behind him. "You don't have Aura right now! If they shot you, you would die!"

Well, nice of you to care miss. But what is actually important is that we have people to rescue.

Shirou disregarded the lecture as he concentrated on the free flying pair of Kanshou and Bakuya which were getting too close for comfort to his new pair. So Shirou jumped back, his reinforced legs arcing him over the professional but beautiful woman even as he used the new distance between him and the barrier to throw the swords around her barrier. The other two blades curved, right before hitting the purple barrier and followed the two newer blades back into collection of robots.

Shirou crouched as he landed, watching his Noble Phantasms wreak havoc among the ranks of the robots, their mystical properties and sharpness easily cutting through the robots.

"Weren't you listening when I told you that if we died, then the people behind us would die also?" Glynda demanded, wheeling around to face Shirou, her purple barrier guarding her back from the ever-decreasing number of bullets coming their way. "I don't speak to hear myself talk, you know!"

"Yeah, but we're fine," Shirou pointed towards the soldiers who were poking out their heads and guns to fire on the much smaller number of robots. "We're uninjured and the soldiers needed some help."

"But leaping before you look is a fast way to change that," Glynda chastised, her stern frown on show as she tried to pound something into Shirou's thick head. "The new Altasian Knight-200s are brand new, cutting edge tech. If you aren't careful, they can kill a full Huntsman, _especially_ if your Aura happens to be broken."

Shirou could understand what she was getting at. But he was the bone of his sword so she would need something stronger than cautionary logic to penetrate through his skull.

He probably shouldn't be proud of that.

Besides, he was ready to protect himself. He doubted that the android robots would be able to hurt him while he had Kanshou and Bakuya and their own precise targeting algorithms.

Behind Ms. Goodwitch, Shirou watched as the robots continued to be decimated second by second, most of them sliced open and the few remaining drawing the fire of the soldiers as the androids fell.

And when the copies of Kanshou and Bakuya weren't going to hit the last few, Shirou dismissed the swords, causing them to vanish as they spun through the air.

"Well, let's make sure they can't," Shirou said, walking around Ms. Goodwitch, projecting a new arrow for his bow to use. "If they are all down, then there isn't anything that can kill us."

"I know that," Glynda Goodwitch snapped as she turned around towards the robots and shot a dozen needles, downing the last of the robots. "But you need to learn self-preservation. You'll be having classes on it _after_ this emergency is resolved."

"Looking forward to it," Shirou said sarcastically as he stored the arrow in his quiver. No point in wasting it. In the midst of all this fighting, even if his dual Origin and Element meant that he could project ordinary weapons at a fraction of a cost, he didn't want to waste the energy in projecting a new arrow, not when he could store an old one for later use.

But returning to Glynda's comment, Shirou had already learned a lot from her.

For one thing, magic wasn't a secret on this world. It just went by a different name and was limited to one system. Probably used Aura as another term for od or mana and used Semblance for spells.

Eh, a new world, new terms. It was amazing enough that Shirou had been able to communicate with people in Mistral despite the initial language barrier.

"Ma'am! Sir!" one of the soldiers saluted as they came out from behind cover. "Thank you for your help!"

"At ease lieutenant," Glynda Goodwitch said to the officer as Shirou studied the man. His armor was dinged from bullets but he wasn't in bad condition. "What's the situation?"

"Across the city? Cr- Bad, Ma'am," the man grimaced under his helmet. "The numbers of the Grimm have decreased in this sector and in the neighboring sectors but the Knights and Paladins are still on the loose. The White Fang have retreated but several VIPs and their escorts have already died at their hands. And we are close enough to the da- dangerous, overran, hostile flagship that we can't get air support."

Glynda winced at that. Shirou waited patiently.

The best he could do now was to go to the center of the fighting or enemy strongholds and take them down. But he didn't know where those were so getting information was the prudent thing to do. And Ms. Goodwitch was already getting good answers from the man.

"Public morale is sh- in the toilet and the criminal elements are up in arms and just as likely to shoot us as they are the White Fang or Grimm if we approach them," the officer continued, editing his language in the presence of a lady. "Beacon is nearly overran by hostiles and they are evacuating the wounded right now but are still fighting."

"What about the students? The staff?" Ms. Goodwitch asked in alarm and concern.

"Unknown, Ma'am," the officer reported apologetically. "That isn't a matter for my platoon. Our orders are to maintain this side of the safe zone for the evacuees."

"How are you receiving evacuees?" Goodwitch asked, frowning. "Wouldn't the flagship prevent people from evacuating from Beacon?"

"That's the da- thing, Ma'am." The officer reported in a firm voice. "The flagship lets passenger ships come and go but opens fire on anything that gets close that isn't Grimm. It also shoots any f- armed ships that are in range."

"Very well," Ms. Goodwitch said firmly. "Thank you, officer. Do you know where the Wyvern is?"

"No, Ma'am. We haven't seen it here." The lieutenant said before hesitating. "The captain might know though."

"I see," she said pensively before shaking herself. "Where is your captain?"

"At the landing zone, Ma'am. He's managing the defense of this zone and taking count of the refugees," The officer waved to one of his wounded men whose thigh was bleeding from a bullet wound. "If you could take Private Cyan to the medics, we'll appreciate it. She'll also point the way for you."

"Thank you, lieutenant," Glynda thanked the man who saluted before turning his attention to managing his troops. Shirou had already left his position to get close to the wounded private. Helping to get her onto his back, Shirou stood up to find Glynda standing still and looking at him.

"What are you waiting for, Ms. Goodwitch?" Shirou raised an eyebrow at the motionless woman. "Time's a wasting."

"Call me Glynda," Glynda smiled, as she started walking into the safe zone, traces of stress bleeding off of her as Shirou fell in beside her. "Anyone who can kill a Goliath with me can call me by my first name."

The private made a choking sound from Shirou's back.

Shirou nodded. "In that case, feel free to call me by my first name as well. Although you have been doing it for a while so it really doesn't mean anything."

"It's easier to say," Glynda replied, a faint blush of embarrassment on her cheeks. "My apologies if it was forward of me."

"Nah, no biggie," Shirou waved it off. "Most of my enemies like to yell my last name at me so I'm more used to it coming from people trying to kill me. Although, most of my friends are either dead or have tried to kill me too, so I guess I'm used to both of my names being yelled at me."

"Sounds… rather unfriendly," Glynda was looking at him in worry.

Shirou shrugged. "They were trying to force my sister into a fate worse than death. I disagreed and we fought it out. Now it is over."

A beat of silence.

"That isn't how most friendships end, you know," Glynda commented. "Rather atypical to tell the truth. Most people don't like their friendships to end in literal fights over their sister."

The private nodded fervently on Shirou's back, the motion vibrating through his shirt.

"Well, I had an unusual life," Shirou chose not to mention being raised as an assassin's assistant, helping to kill warlords, evil magus, and villains until they settled down in Fuyuki hoping to use a young girl, his new sister, with a unique ability in order to save the world in one stroke.

But that was then, Shirou reminded himself before looking up at the starry sky, towards the broken moon. How would Miyu like this sky in comparison to their old world's sky? "Wouldn't give it up for anything though."

Glynda hummed, a note of agreement in her voice before silence fell over the trio. It wasn't an awkward silence. More of a reflective one.

* * *

"The Wyvern's at Beacon," the captain said bluntly. "The flagship isn't firing on it either but neither have they moved for a while. Most of our men there have already fallen to the White Fang and their Grimm drops but the student Huntsmen and Huntresses are managing to hold ground. For now, at least. The casualties are mounting and the number of wounded is increasing by the minute. To make matters worse, we haven't heard from Professor Ozpin for, um," he glanced down at the long list of logs visible before grimacing and looking back up. "for quite some time now."

Shirou and Glynda had dropped off Private Cyan at the clinic taken over by the medics before going next door to the Captain's command post. Here they found the captain using his scroll to communicate intelligence and orders from and to his superiors and subordinates as the army fought throughout the city while some technicians updated the holographic colored map of Vale hanging in the air beside the man.

Glynda inhaled sharply at that.

That was the worst news she could have received. Ozpin would never have gone out of communication while Vale was in this state unless something happened to him. And with the Wyvern at Beacon, it only made sense that he was either fighting some assassin sent by Salem or was making urgent preparations against the Wyvern. The problem was, the Wyvern wasn't something you fought on your own. To battle it, you needed to communicate with others and prepare plans and traps against it.

The most likely option was that Ozpin was battling for his life even now. And Salem wouldn't have sent an assassin unless she thought the assassin had some chance of success.

Glynda recollected herself. This was _Ozpin_. He probably was just busy fighting.

But if Ozpin was busy with his own problems, then what about the students?

The White Fang, the Grimm, and the rogue Atlas robots all supporting the Wyvern would be too much for her students. And with the flocks of Nevermore and Griffons everywhere, and especially with the hostile flagship at Beacon covering the Wyvern, Atlas's fleet couldn't move in to help the students.

Her poor students! They weren't ready for a foe like the Wyvern. Even seasoned Hunters had difficulty with the most powerful of Grimm and that was without all their fellow humans fighting alongside the Grimm.

"When is the next airship coming in from Beacon?" Glynda asked. "Wait, how did my students get to Beacon? The last I heard, the students were all on Amity Colosseum!"

"A large number of tournament fighters decided that they would choose to fight," the captain explained as he referred to the logs for his map. "The general decided to send them to defend Beacon in order to keep them out of the more dangerous fighting."

Glynda and Shirou both exhaled simultaneously.

That had been a good call, Glynda knew. Send the students to defend Beacon where they could handle the few Grimm that could make it up there, while freeing up all the professors to handle the problems in the city.

But right now, it was the wrong choice.

The Wyvern would release a flood of Grimm upon Beacon. And the rogue robots could prove a significant challenge to her weaker students like Jaune or Cardin.

Glynda knew that Ozpin had ordered her to the city. Vale needed its Huntresses and Huntsmen.

But she needed to be there, at Beacon! She needed to protect her students.

They stood no chance against a Wyvern and they would think they didn't have a choice but to fight it.

They would die! They needed to evacuate!

"How soon can we get there?" Shirou asked, frowning.

Glynda glanced aside to the man. She had almost forgotten about him in her worry about her students.

"Well, the next ship will be-" The captain started before he stopped and put one hand to his earpiece. "Yes, general. You're reading loud and clear."

He paused for a bit, receiving his orders before speaking again. "I have a Glynda Goodwitch here. She just arrived and I was briefing her up on the current situation."

Another pause as Glynda waited for James to communicate to his captain.

"Understood. I will convey your instructions." The captain removed his hand from the phone.

"What is it, captain?" Glynda asked, impatiently.

Like it or not, James was in charge of Vale's defenses at the moment. And she was a Huntress sworn to protect Vale.

"General Ironwood has ordered you to maintain the safe zone here and cooperate with the other huntsmen. Expand it if possible. We are the closest area where the air buses can land. The evacuation ships will come here and we need to make sure that they can land safely." The captain met her gaze with no fear in his eyes.

Glynda found herself torn.

Should she listen to the general's orders? Or should she ignore them and move to protect her students?

Discipline was important, she chastised herself. If her students didn't have anywhere to land, then they would die to the flying Grimm downing the airbuses.

"Understood," she nodded her acceptance before wheeling around.

She was part of a greater whole. She was Glynda Goodwitch, professor of Beacon, protector of the world, and a Huntress of Vale.

If she didn't do her part, the others would fail and all would be lost.

"Hey, are you okay with that?" Shirou asked from behind her. "What about the Wyvern?"

Glynda stopped, her cape fluttering as it settled against her back.

"If I don't ensure that the students can land, they will have to fly farther," she explained, not turning around but her hand was gripped a tad too tightly on the crop. "We have medical facilities here for the wounded. We are the closest location. If we aren't secure here, they will die. I have to trust Ironwood that the ships will come. Fortunately for us all, I do trust him."

"And as for the Wyvern," Glynda let out a huff of air. It really was for the best. She was low on Aura, the city was still locked in battle, and Atlas needed both their flagship and their robots back. A single strike, if that was all the energy Shirou had left to work with, also ran the risk of it missing, putting the mission in jeopardy. And all of that was assuming that there were no complications, something practically guaranteed to be false with both Beacon and Vale's current chaos. "If it stays at Beacon, we can try to kill it later after rescuing the students from Beacon. The advantage of such a plan is that we will have time to recover our strength before such an attack. Something that we will all desperately need."

Leaving her words behind like the toll of an evening bell, Glynda walked forward and out the door of the building.

Just in time to see an Atlas ship, James' flagship it looked like, crash onto a building some distance away and explode.

"At least he won't need to reclaim his ship," Glynda noted to the air after the sound of the explosion stopped ringing.

Then she walked forward to prepare for more fighting.

The Grimm would be coming. With defeated and wounded trainees, the Grimm would most certainly come.

But they would not survive to get even close to her students.

* * *

As Glynda Goodwitch left the building, Shirou sighed, glanced at the map and sighed.

He didn't like retreating from battles. It had never been his thing. He, and Archer before him, had been more likely to run _to_ the battlefield instead of away from them.

But Glynda had raised some good points. Shirou barely had enough Od left to make and use a single high-ranking Noble Phantasm. If he had to fight his way into Beacon before facing the Wyvern, he would probably have to sacrifice his life in order to bring down the Wyvern.

And if he died, how would he protect Miyu? How could he find her and protect her if he was dead?

He couldn't. If he didn't have help, the battle against the Wyvern might be one he was better off not fighting right now. And if it wasn't leaving Beacon, he did have time to recover and prepare to fight it, only this time without the robots and White Fang on the Grimm's side. And with enough flying pairs of Kanshou and Bakuya, the number of smaller Grimm wouldn't matter as none would live to get close to him.

It looked like the right choice would be to not fight at Beacon yet.

"I'll go help with expanding the perimeter," Shirou said, pulling out Archer's bow and projecting a few dozen more arrows into his quiver. "Do you have a good sniping spot to start from?"

"What's your range?" the captain immediately asked.

"Hmm," Shirou hummed. How far could he shoot a normal arrow? Not a Noble Phantasm, just a plain average arrow you could find anywhere. Especially if anywhere happened to be Unlimited Blade Works. "On flat ground, I'm good for 400 meters. On buildings, a lot more than that but that depends on the wind and the height of the building…"

Shirou shrugged. Taller buildings gave him more flight time, which meant he could shoot further. His stronger arrows, his mystically enhanced arrows and Noble Phantasms, could ignore the effects of drag a lot better and could range a lot further.

Shirou wasn't quite up to Archer's range yet. But he was working up to it.

"Well, how about…" The officer began, adjusting the map to 3D and pointing out some good buildings to shoot from.

Shirou hoped he could get a good view of the city and the people. Maybe, if he was lucky, while he shot down Grimm, he could find Miyu.

But to tell the truth, Shirou hoped he didn't find Miyu here. She shouldn't have to live through something like this. Her life had already been hard enough.

But when had life ever been truly kind to anyone?

* * *

**Okay, I just had to say, I had a bit too much fun making the lieutenant edit his words. I don't like swearing so you won't find much of it in my works.**


	4. Chapter 4: Resting a Sword

**Sorry for the late chapter. Two weeks ago was a big religious conference for my church and that took up all day. It was great though. And Saturday is when I do my editing for this story. Then Saturday of last week, I fell sick. This chapter had been waiting around for a while and only today did I get around to it.**

**Chapter 4: Resting a Sword**

Shirou yawned as he tread through the streets of Vale. He had stayed up the night on a roof, sniping any Grimm he could see until the Grimm had stopped approaching. He had only been taken off duty after the entire city had settled down, causing the army to release people to go and get some rest.

Shirou wasn't in _bad_ condition. His wounds were pretty light in regards to how long the battle for Vale had ran. The Grimm couldn't even get into melee range after Atlas's fleet had moped up the aerial battles and slain the flying Grimm over the city. And with the robots deactivated, the second major foe didn't exist. To follow it all up, the White Fang had focused on doing surgical strikes before retreating. Some hotheads had sought to continue pressing the attack, but most had retreated after carrying out their objectives.

For the hotheads, Shirou hadn't given them any mercy by shooting out their legs when he could. He doubted that any judge or jury would be merciful after what the White Fang had done.

That being said, Shirou was still very low on his Od reserves. He would need to rest for a while before he could fight at full power again.

Shirou glanced at Beacon's Tower where a bright flash of light had originated from and either paralyzed or petrified the dragon. Now that he knew that the mystical energy he had found in the history of Remnant's weapons wasn't a product of Dust, but was actually Remnant's form of magecraft, he guessed that someone had petrified the dragon. Pretty impressive, equivalent to valuable Mystic Eyes on his old world.

But he was still worried about Beacon.

The students had escaped, well most of them from what he had heard. Some of them had died and others were now crippled for life. But the evacuation had been carried out and the academy on the plateau was now empty of life.

Human life at least. The Grimm were even now arriving in greater numbers, flying Grimm like Nevermore or Griffons arriving from every direction and Shirou's reinforced eyes could see Grimm trying to climb the cliffs even now.

However, the evacuation had been at cost, and not just in terms of lives. Communications were down, and from what Shirou had heard, it was not only down in Vale, but also between the other kingdoms as well. The only way to communicate was by word of mouth and radio now.

Why it was so? Shirou had no clue. No communication technology should be set up so fragile that when one communication tower was knocked out of commission, it would take the entire network down. The engineers should have built for redundancy, in case of a technical failure that required shutting one tower down for maintenance or overhaul. How hard would it have been to build two towers and keep the second on a smaller crew?

But Shirou never had specialized in long-range communication towers. He knew how to operate a jammer, at least back on Earth, and he knew where to disable or destroy a phone tower so that people couldn't contact anyone else. But he hadn't kept up with the satellite technology after Kiritsugu had died and he didn't know how Remnant's cutting-edge technology compared to Earth's. Also, did Remnant even have satellites? Shirou hadn't heard of any, but would he have? They weren't a common topic of conversation and everything that might have linked to a satellite linked to the CCT towers instead.

Regardless, Shirou shrugged, this was a different planet. Different geniuses had been born, they had discovered or invented different things, and Remnant was more dependent on their unique resource of Dust. Earth depended on fossil fuels. From there, it only made sense that a different technology base with different resources and materials should result in different inventions.

For instance, Remnant's shifting technology in their weapons and robotics were far more advanced than Earth's equivalents. Shirou had examined and analyzed enough of Remnant's technology that he could give a fair hand at fixing things despite how different the two planets were.

Amidst his musings of technology, Shirou turned the street corner and halted.

Yellow police tape was all over the street in front of the hotel. Behind the tape, where the wall of the ground floor of the hotel had once been, was a giant hole.

Shirou's eyes roved around the scene picking up additional details. Such as the scorch marks on the ground, the slightly melted chairs in the foyer, and the faint scent of smoke.

Shirou sniffed the air, trying to pick up on more details. For one thing, the smoke didn't smell like wood smoke. More a fiery scent that he associated with fire Dust.

What had happened here?

"Excuse me," Shirou turned to ask the sole police officer who was leaning against a wall next to the yellow tape. The poor man looked like he wanted nothing more to do than to go to sleep. Poor guy. The police had been as hard hit as everyone else in Vale, and they weren't trained to deal with Grimm invasions supported by rouge army elements and terrorist strikes, all at the same time. Or at least, Shirou didn't think they were. "Do you mind tell me what-" Shirou felt a yawn coming on. "-happened here?"

"White Fang terrorist," The man yawned in return while he covered his mouth. "Wanted to kill some VIP and snuck a bomb into the hotel during the fighting. Killed more than a few people and did some structural damage. You renting a room here?"

"Yeah," Shirou looked again, this time looking closer at the scorched marks. Some of them were near outlines that could have once been where a person had died. Poor people. "I'm guessing the hotel is closed now?"

"Unless you want to wake up in the middle of the night to the hotel collapsing," The officer joked but it looked like the joke fell flat to even him. "We think it is stable enough to retrieve residents' belongings from their rooms but you are not allowed to spend the night here. Too dangerous."

The officer paused as a thought occurred to him. "You are a resident, right?"

"Yes," Shirou affirmed as he fished in his pocket for his room key and handed it over. "Shirou Emiya, room 418."

Kiritsugu had collapsed hotels before to get at a target back when he and Shirou had been traveling. It had made for good insurance for an assassination plan. But an amateur, like a member of the White Fang, wouldn't know how to do it properly to get it to collapse at the proper time.

Amateurs should leave assassinations to the professionals. Better chance of success and lesser chance of innocents getting caught in the attack.

"Do you know a good place to spend the night?" the young man asked.

"Sorry, man," the officer shook his head as he gave the key back. "Most hotels would be already full and it'll take days for hotel managers to determine if a resident is dead or alive. Maybe even have already left the city. And the hotels were full even before the attack. Stupid Atlas and curse the White Fang."

The last was said in an undertone.

Shirou could understand the malice. The simultaneous attacks of both was horrible for the city. The robots had turned on the very people they were protecting and the White Fang had displayed their hatred and blind desire for vengeance on everyone.

They couldn't claim to be working for the Faunus anymore. Not with all the dead bodies of Faunus Shirou had seen. This was just the blind hatred of fanatics that killed and killed, becoming the very monsters that they claimed to fight.

Fanatics that needed to be put down so that the innocents could live.

"Yeah, no clue what they were hoping to accomplish by this," Shirou shook his head. "It's insane to think something like this could make anything better. It'll only make things worse."

"They're not sane," the officer snapped with a scowl on his face. "Stupid Faunus and stupid Atlas. Can't they take their bloody fighting out on each other and leave the rest of us alone?"

"Unfortunately, it doesn't look like leaving others in peace had even crossed their minds." Shirou commented drily as he ducked under the police tape as the officer helpfully held it up for him. "But thanks for the help."

"Any time, man." the officer called out before turning back to act as a sentry on the streets.

As Shirou walked into the hotel and decided to take the stairs rather than the elevator, the slightly melted plastic elevator button helped a bit, he pondered on where he could sleep.

He could sleep on the streets. That wouldn't be anything he hadn't done before. Unfortunately, Shirou didn't think that restaurants would be open tomorrow and he needed to eat. Life didn't go well when you didn't have food to eat.

No, Shirou needed a place to sleep and a kitchen to cook in. Especially after a night like tonight. He needed to relax and cooking was a good way to bleed off the stress of long-running battle.

He wished he could cook meals with Miyu again, like they once had.

As Shirou passed a window on a landing between two flights of stairs, some movement caught his eye and he snapped his head to stare out the window.

A Faunus, he could tell by the black ears on top of her head, was jumping from rooftop to rooftop. For a brief moment, Shirou wondered if she was White Fang because who else would be using the rooftops rather than the streets at this hour?

But then his eyes caught sight of her weapon, a variant ballistic chain scythe with sword, cleaver, kusarigama, and gun forms as well as a ribbon connecting the weapon and its sheathe. Its name was Gambol Shroud and it was used on a wide variety of foes, including guards, Hunters in sparring matches, Grimm, Atlas robots, and White Fang members. It had also been damaged by conflict with a White Fang member's chokuto sword and some mystical energy just a few hours prior.

Shirou raised his eyebrow as he watched her run and jump from roof to roof, in the direction of the port.

A deserter, huh? Looked like the White Fang's recent actions hadn't pleased all the members of the White Fang. At least one, probably a bunch more had decided to rebel against the White Fang during or before the attack.

Shirou turned his gaze away, letting her run away, and continued to climb the stairs.

What right did he have to interfere with another's desire for a new life? If she regretted helping the White Fang, then she should live to do something about them. Killing her would benefit no one except the White Fang.

And Shirou wasn't in the habit of doing favors for his enemies.

A series of memories about all the times he had gone out of his way to help Julian Ainsworth with something at school flashed through his mind.

Okay, so he was in the habit of doing favors for his enemies, but that wasn't while they were his enemies or in the midst of _combat_. Nor was he willing to kill people unless it was the best option left.

There was nothing wrong with saving people. It was the right thing to do.

And if someone wanted to act in accordance with their beliefs, Shirou had no objection. He had fought Julian and the Class Card holders for the sake of Miyu. Julian had fought to save the world. Of the two, Shirou was the villain for dooming millions to die.

If someone else wanted to save people, then Shirou would let them go about it until it threatened Miyu. Probably lend a hand too as saving people was still a worthwhile thing to do. Miyu was just more important than any number of people.

Putting the deserter out of his mind, Shirou returned to pondering where he could go for the night. He needed someplace to live until he could confirm that Miyu wasn't in Vale. Or dead. Hopefully she had a nice home with kind people right now.

As for Shirou, he still needed to make sure that he didn't die before finding Miyu. Now where could he go…

Oh wait, there was that one offer for anything. And they would probably know somewhere with a kitchen.

* * *

_Elsewhere…_

The air in the old Vale Army Barracks was somber as the three professors prepared their beds and tried to deal with the news they had received.

Beacon was lost. Ozpin had been killed. The CCT was down. Thousands were dead and multiple students were lost forever.

It was enough to make them all quiet. Bart Oobleck wasn't as fast as he usually was, taking his time to do things. Glynda felt a lethargy coming over her as she tried to avoid thinking about all that had changed.

Peter Port on the other hand…

"So how were your battles today, Glynda?" Peter asked through the open door in his usual larger than life manner as he prepared his bed across the hall in the low-ranking married officer dorm room. "Did you manage to fight off over a hundred Grimm? Take down three Paladins at once?"

"Oh, nothing so impressive," Glynda lightly commented, taking Peter up on his subtle invitation to lift everyone's spirits instead of drowning themselves in gloom. "Only helped to take down a herd of Goliaths and their escorting Grimm."

PFFFT!

Bart spit-took his coffee. Fortunately, not to her face but some stray drops still managed to land on her clothes.

She glared, mildly annoyed at him as she fished out a handkerchief to wipe up the drops.

"Oh?" Peter raised an eyebrow at her claim. "Would that be one of the larger explosions I heard? Or did you steal Ironwood's falling ship and used it to destroy the herd?"

"The first, actually," Glynda replied, remembering that the number of large explosions in Vale were rather limited. "Albeit, I cannot say that I did it. I was partnered with- "

Glynda hesitated. What should she say to her fellow professors? They weren't in full possession of Ozpin's secrets. They had some of them and knew that Ozpin was part of something and that he was dedicated to protecting the human race. But they didn't know about his full history or his status as a former wizard.

So how could she define Shirou Emiya?

"-an untrained Huntsman," she decided on. "He didn't know what Aura or Semblance was but managed to awaken his own and developed it to great effect."

Close enough. His displayed magical abilities were close enough to an odd yet strong Semblance that he could possibly hide his magic as a Semblance.

"Well, well, that is interesting," Peter said, rubbing his moustache. "Reminds me of the time that I met that one girl in a village in Atlas that singlehandedly held off a horde of Grimm until I- "

Glynda started to pay less attention to Peter. His stories had real life experience behind them so there was some merit to listening to them. Peter Port did have more experience as a Huntsman than everyone else combined, if you excluded Ozpin.

But at the same time, Peter's memory was exaggerated. Some of his stories had changed over the years as his memory tried to remember whether it was this experience or that experience that he was talking about.

For instance, the current one he was talking about, the one about a red-headed girl dropping a cliff on a horde of Grimm.

"I remember Peter," Glynda said, interrupting the man. "I was the girl, remember?"

"Really?" Peter Port frowned. "I could have sworn that she was a red-head."

"That was my mother," Glynda said flatly. She and her mother did not look _that_ much alike. Their hair colors were different at the very least! "We were visiting my mother's cousin and her son, who had moved to the village. My mother was in the village helping to manage the evacuation while I tried to wipe out the horde by dropping the cliff path on them. Then you came along and finished the job."

"Ah yes," the Grimm Studies Professor chuckled as his memory was rejogged. "You were a passionate teenager back then. A composed, collected, and a rather polite public image but filled with an inner fire to fight and ready to sacrifice."

"Well, yes," Glynda said, somewhat caught on the back foot as Peter gave his impressions of her teenaged self. "I was quite young after all. People do grow up, you know."

"You were the first one to try and give me a gratuitous number of 'thank you's in the middle of combat because 'I don't want to leave any debts unpaid.' Ha ha. But you definitely didn't let that sarcasm and wit come out to play back then," Peter remembered. "Time leaves its marks on us all."

"Oh yes, most definitely," Bart Oobleck jumped in, his high speed still applying to his mouth, even if his body was exhausted. "The effects of time on culture and civilization is, while slower than that on the individual, one of the greatest and most fascinating points of archeology and history! There is much one can learn just by observing how human cultures and individuals reacted to changes in the environment and their fellow humans. The loosening of restraints is one of the signs of the maturation of most civilizations and is typically followed by either the collapse of the civilization or a revolution that redefines the era of said civilization."

"Speaking of collapse," Glynda interrupted, looking up from checking over her equipment. "I am looking forward to actually hitting a bed tonight."

"Yes, we definitely aren't as young as we used to be," Peter chuckled. "Why in my heyday, it was nothing to fight for an entire day and night before working straight through the second day."

As Glynda let her fellow professor prattle on while he prepared his double bed in their accommodated barracks dorm for both him and his wife, who was going to join them once she returned from guarding the evacuation shelters, Glynda worked on taking inventory of the Dust she had left.

It wasn't very good. The spike in Dust prices from Roman's string of thefts had impacted how many Crystals she could afford on her teacher's budget. And she had used more than a few crystals up on the Goliath and the other fighting throughout the city.

A sudden knocking on the dorm caused the three Beacon professors to pause in their bedtime preparations.

Glynda glanced over to her fellows, noting their surprise at having someone knock.

Peter's wife never knocked.

They subtly prepared for combat as they came out to hallway, Glynda grabbing her crop while Peter rummaged for his old battle axe. Bart meanwhile got his weapon into his hand, taking a sip of coffe before zipping over to the door.

A Hunter's job was never done.

Bart opened it, revealing a white haired, tanned and awkward looking individual with a single knapsack slung over his shoulder.

"Hey," Shirou Emiya rubbed the back of his head. "My hotel got bombed by the White Fang so I'm out of a place to sleep for the night. Would you happen to know where I can get a bed for the night at this time?"

"Shirou?" Glynda asked in surprise. She hadn't expected him to show up here or tonight after he said he was going to the hotel.

"Do you know this fellow?" Bart glanced over to Glynda before starting to examine Shirou. "Strange, I'm afraid I don't quite recognize your ethnicity. You have a blend of physical traits from numerous cultures but none of them are combined like what you have."

"I was found and rescued as a kid but my experiences left me with amnesia of my childhood and biological family," Shirou explained to Bart's curiosity.

"Yes, I do know him," Glynda answered Bart's question, a tired curiosity in her tone as to what Shirou was doing here. "Bart, Peter, this is Shirou Emiya, the fellow who I helped take down the Goliaths."

"I didn't do much," Shirou humbly demurred. "Glynda spent a lot longer fighting the Goliath than I did."

"Yes, I did. And then you casually killed the entire herd in two attacks," Glynda rebutted flatly. "Almost as if my own fighting was nothing more than a filibuster."

No, Glynda didn't hold a grudge for him wasting her time due to a miscommunication. Not anymore.

"Ah, sorry." Shirou awkwardly chuckled. "But I did far more collateral damage to the city than you did."

"Yes, that poor mall and street will never be the same again," Glynda said drily, thinking of the crater and vanished mall.

"Oh ho ho ho," The portly professor laughed loudly as he slapped Shirou Emiya on the shoulder, nearly knocking him over. "You are too modest, Shirou Emiya. Taking down prey like a Goliath should be a story for the ages. Doing it alongside our brilliant combat professor should only make it more exciting."

"Well, there isn't much to tell," Shirou said uncomfortably under the expectant stares of the two male professors before changing the subject. "But I'm still looking for a good place to sleep. Every place I've tried has been full."

The three professor's eyes slid over to the empty third bed in the barracks.

Peach was rooming in her family home with her extensive family.

And, Glynda realized, she needed to keep an eye on Shirou Emiya until they could find Ozpin's next host.

"We have a spare bed here," Glynda spoke up quickly before either of her comrades could think of something. "You can join us if you are lacking anything."

"I couldn't impose-" Shirou started before getting slapped on the shoulder again by Peter.

"Nonsense!" Peter laughed boisterously. "For a story like the Goliaths, you have to tell us! I have a few of my own that compare as well. But-" the man yawned loudly. "thaaat will have to be tomorrow. It's rather late and every good Huntsman and Huntress needs their sleep."

As if on cue, a snore erupted from Oobleck, who had just fallen asleep leaning against the wall.

Shirou cocked an eyebrow at the sleeping professor. "All right," he agreed, fighting back his own yawn. "Just for tonight then. Which beds are open?"

"That one," Glynda pointed to the bed on the far left.

Shirou nodded and walked over to the bed, dropping his bag onto the ground.

And fell onto the bed, face first, and was out like a light.

Glynda and Peter looked at him amused.

"Well, at least he knows how to sleep," Peter chuckled.

"Indeed," Glynda agreed with a tired smile. "I'll make sure Shirou is all right while you take Bart to his bed?"

* * *

The next morning, Glynda awoke rather suddenly. And quickly in comparison for how she normally woke up.

She had never allowed herself to become dependent on coffee for waking herself up. Instead, she usually took about 15 minutes to become fully alert when she woke up. But her years in the field had trained her to wake up fast if she wasn't in a secure place.

This wasn't her bed. This wasn't her room at Beacon. And there were sounds and odors that she wasn't familiar with floating in the air.

Glynda reached out with her semblance to bring her weapon to hand while she turned her head to look at the source of the noise.

The small kitchen area had been opened up and Shirou Emiya was already moving around in it, doing stuff that kept on emitting those sounds and smells.

It took a while for Glynda to realize that Shirou was cooking. A realization that wasn't helped by his attire.

Glynda dry swallowed.

Shirou Emiya's shirt was off. He still wore a set of black pants, but she wasn't looking at that.

Oh my. His shirt had certainly covered _a lot_. She had seen active Hunters with less ripped muscles and worse body shape than his. Although he did have _a lot_ of scars. Enough to indicate that he had fought powerful foes and had came out alive.

Not to mention that she could now see that his legs were much longer than his attire had indicated. His belt was holding up his pants and they were riding higher than she had thought just by looking at him yesterday. How long must his legs be?

Glynda was suddenly acutely aware of her own appearance as she swung her legs out of her bed and looked at her reflection in the full-length mirror in the former officer's quarters. Her hair was uncombed, she had smudges on her clothes and one on her face. Her clothes were rumpled from sleeping in them and she hadn't had a shower since yesterday morning.

She discreetly sniffed herself, and found herself wrinkling her nose at her body odor.

Compared to him, she looked and _smelled_ like a mess.

No fair that a guy could wake up looking as handsome as _that_, while she looked like a mess.

"Good morning," the man called from the kitchen without looking over his shoulder.

"Good morning, Shirou," Glynda replied, standing up, running her hands through her hair in an attempt to comb it. "Have you been up long?"

"Not that long," the man replied, focusing on the pans and their contents in front of him. "Just up long enough to make breakfast, do a morning workout, and take a shower. Not quite long enough to finish changing before the others needed breakfast though, so sorry about my state of attire."

Glynda brightened at the mention of a shower.

"A shower?" she asked. "Do you know where it is? Are we under any form of water rationing?"

"Haven't heard of rationing the water yet. But the shower is out the door and down the hall a bit," the self-proclaimed magician said. "But I am about to finish up another serving of breakfast so if you want to wait a minute and a half, I'll have it ready and you can eat."

Glynda noted the emptiness of her stomach. But it wasn't polite to take another's breakfast away. "I'll be fine. You can go ahead and eat," she assured the man.

"Your fellow professors, you are all professors at the Huntsman Academy, right?" The man asked questioningly.

"Yes," Glynda affirmed. "Have worked together for years now."

"They already ate and left. I am making enough for you as well," the man continued before whispering, "I hope."

"Excuse me?" Glynda asked, icy frost in her voice. Was he implying that she was a big eater? That she would steal his breakfast? That she was fat?

"Ah, I was just saying I wasn't expecting your fellows to eat as much as they did," Shirou hurriedly explained, flipping something, Glynda didn't know what it was but it looked like a weird pancake, before turning around and trying to explain. "I had thought that I had made enough for the five of us, but the Ports and Oobleck ate a lot more than I thought they would. Guess I didn't account for how much fighting we all did last night."

"Ah," Glynda sighed, her pride assuaged even as the familiar shame for the antics of her fellow teachers set in. "I apologize for my fellows. I am sure they didn't intend to eat all of your portion as well."

"Eh, its no problem," Shirou shrugged as he leaned against the small counter space. "I like to cook. It's a good way to destress. Reminds me of the days I used to cook with my sister. And food is better when eaten with others anyways."

As the man obviously reminisced over his days with his sister, his smile was nostalgic. It also made Glynda want to smile as well for some reason.

"I am sure," Glynda agreed but then realized something. "Didn't the Ports and Bart already eat with you?"

"They woke up as I was cooking the first breakfast," Shirou explained, turning to put on either seasoning or spices onto the food. "By the time I finished, cooking, they all were finished eating."

The man chuckled good-humoredly. "You would think they were starving or something, the way the three of them stared at the last serving. Like it was a Holy Grail."

"A…holy grail?" Glynda asked confused at the term.

"A wish-granting device," Shirou explained, waving it away casually.

Or so he wanted to make it seem. Glynda caught him tensing up for a second before he forced himself to relax. Like he had accidentally revealed something that he didn't want to.

He wasn't too bad of a liar, not a good one but not too bad at it. Unfortunately, she was a teacher. She had long ago learned to recognize when people were lying to her and when they weren't.

Which had involved learning that, yes, sometimes a Grimm did actually eat their homework.

Not that she let that team off for it. She just told them to submit it late and she would apply the proper penalities when grading it.

Especially after she had found a second team try to make that excuse reality. Although to be fair, she was more concerned about how much effort the second team had poured into getting the Beowolf and later the Boarbatusk to eat their essays rather than fight it. If they had poured half of that effort into rewriting the essay…

Students. The Hunter Academies accepted the best but sometimes that resulted in a lot of excellent effort going into the strangest of things.

"I see," she said neutrally. Should she pry into it or not?

"Ah, it's done," Shirou said flipping whatever it was he was cooking one last time and then onto the stack he had on a plate. "Come sit down and eat."

"I can't just-" Glynda started to excuse herself before Shirou interrupted her.

"It's fine. It's more than I can eat on my own. Besides, meals are better when they are shared," he nodded as he placed the stack of strange pancake-like things on the small table that hadn't been there last night.

Glynda hesitated as the emptiness in her stomach reminded her that she hadn't eaten for a while. And it did smell really good and, well, if he didn't mind…

"All right," she resigned herself to it. It was cheaper than going to a restaurant, no matter how bad the food might be. Or good, judging by the scent. "But first let me wash my hands."

"Oh, good idea," Shirou said as he served one of the disks onto one of the two plates left on the table. "I already washed up before cooking but it might not be bad to wash my hands again."

Glynda nodded as she turned towards the door, intending to use the washroom's sinks and soap to wash.

"You can use the sink you know," the white-haired man said as he started pouring a sauce over the flat food. "I got some soap out on my morning run. As well as most of the ingredients."

Glynda stopped in her tracks. "Alright." She agreed as she passed the table to get to the kitchen sink, which was full of dirty dishes from earlier.

As she started the process of washing her hands, she asked a question that had been on her mind. "What did you make? If you don't mind me asking."

"Okonomiyaki," the man said, the foreign word rolling off his tongue. "You can think of it as a cross between a pizza and a pancake from my home. It isn't quite like either or anything else you have here, but your friends liked it."

"They'll eat anything," Glynda said drily. "Port has told tales of him living off tree bark before. And some of his comments about how to recognize types of trees are… concerning."

"I can imagine," Shirou replied in an equally dry tone. "Unfortunately, I used cabbage and vegetables instead of tree bark so you'll have to live without the experience."

"Appreciated," Glynda said as she dried her hands off on the towel. "I can live for a few more decades without being able to tell Maple Oak from Poison Oak by their taste alone."

Shirou snorted to hide a laugh at that.

Glynda subtly smiled at making the man laugh.

Before she took a fork and knife and cut up the okono- okonomiya- okonomiyo?- whatever it was before taking a bite.

Then she paused, letting the food sit upon her tongue before chewing.

Oh, this was really good. A lot better than she had expected.

Her stomach seemed to rumble quietly and happily, pleased at the food she was offering to it. Fortunately, it was quiet, not loud enough for the cook to hear.

She would have never lived it down if it had been heard.

But Glynda found that she couldn't stop her fork and knife from attacking the new food, sending tribute to her mouth before making its way to her stomach.

Shirou came back, this time wearing a shirt, and sat down, grabbing an okonomiyaki—that was the word—and put it on his plate, applying more sauce from the bowl on the table onto his.

"What is that sauce?" Glynda asked, finishing up her first foreign pancake.

"It doesn't have a name," Shirou said, shrugging. "I just made it from variety of ingredients and sauces. It's a brand-new mixture and I never got around to giving it a name. Goes well with the okonomiyaki though according to Peter."

"So, homemade?" Glynda asked, eyebrow raised.

Shirou smiled and took a bite.

Glynda grabbed the spoon in the sauce and dabbed some on her okonomiyaki, spreading it like she had watched Shirou do before taking a bite.

Delicious!

Glynda sighed in satisfaction, her belly pleasantly full as she laid her fork down, the last of breakfast gone.

Pity, she wouldn't have minded another.

"Thank you for the food, Shirou," Glynda said as she stood up, grabbing the dirty plates from the table.

"No problem," Shirou said from the sink where he was testing the temperature of the water. "You seemed to like it and good food is meant to be enjoyed."

Glynda ignored the slight rush of blood to her cheeks as she remembered her unseemly rush to devour the food. Her childhood etiquette tutor would be embarrassed if she had seen how Glynda had just eaten.

Not that she had broken any important rules, it was just…

She wasn't supposed to eat that fast. Prevented conversation from happening as her tutor had taught. A stately pace, lending itself to paying attention to her host or fellow guests, was to be done at all meals with others.

However, this isn't a formal meal, Glynda reminded herself. Therefore, she didn't have to eat like she was meeting with the sponsors of Beacon, politicians, or the other leaders of Remnant like she had for the duration of the Vytal Festival.

Her conscience wrestled down into subjection, Glynda looked up in time to see Shirou grab the scrubber.

"I'll wash the dishes," Glynda hurriedly volunteered.

When she had been in the field with her team, she had been assigned the duty of washing the dishes after the first time her team had eaten her try at cooking.

And every time after that. Maybe her blackened, salty and over-spiced food had not been appreciated?

In Glynda's defense, growing up as an upper-class girl did not lend oneself to knowing how to cook.

On the other hand, her semblance was excellent for washing dishes. Once she stopped breaking the dishes from gripping too hard with her Semblance.

"No, I can do it," Shirou refused, not stopping from washing the dishes.

"You cooked, so it is only fair for me to wash," Glynda insisted, moving next to the taller man.

"Nah, I enjoy working in the kitchen. It's no bother," Shirou rebutted as he turned to face her.

Shirou was taller than her, Glynda discovered. Without her high heels, she had to look up to meet his eyes.

They were a warm grey, with a hint of good humor in them.

Glynda felt her throat dry but pushed on, swallowing past her awareness of just how attractive the man was.

"I must insist," Glynda said, trying to get the sink. "I would feel like I am taking advantage of you if you both cooked and cleaned up."

"Then take advantage," Shirou easily countered. "I'll forgive you so just leave the dishes behind."

"I am less concerned with needing your forgiveness than with my own feelings of guilt," Glynda parried. "Besides, dish-washing was my contribution to my own Hunter team for domestic duties. Leaving it to another would be negligence. While some people can let themselves go lazy, I refuse to be them."

"Then fall to the lazy side here," Shirou proposed. "You have your own duties, as both professor and Huntress. Spend your efforts there rather than on dishes."

"I refuse," Glynda immediately discarded Shirou's proposal. "The lazy side offers an inferior retirement program. I would rather not fall into the habit of not contributing in the domestic side now that we have to be more self-reliant. It is counter-productive."

She would miss Beacon's cafeteria. So many types of tea, wide varieties of food from all across Remnant, and leftovers available at whatever hour she was still up and working.

Shirou's lips twitched upwards.

Glynda pressed on. "And this is a refreshing break from the unlimited paperwork of the last week. I would greatly appreciate it if you would let me wash them while…"

Glynda trailed off. What would Shirou be doing? She knew what she would be doing, taking care of and representing Beacon now that Ozpin was dead-

Ozpin. Her tutor, her teacher, her leader, and her friend. Now dead and gone. Not forever, but he would be with his new host and moving on in his immortal quest.

Glynda felt a fresh wave of grief surge over her.

Last night, Jaune and the survivors of his team had told her that Ozpin was dead. Jaune hadn't seen Ozpin die, for which Glynda was thankful for. Jaune didn't need to see someone die yet. He should keep that innocence for a few more years preferably. But Ozpin had told Jaune that he would hold off the Fall Maiden while Pyrrha and Jaune escaped.

Given that Pyrrha was dead at the hands of the new Fall Maiden, it seemed guaranteed that Ozpin was either dead or crippled.

And given how strong Ozpin was, Glynda didn't doubt for a second that the new Fall Maiden had killed him rather than leave him alive at her back.

A hand landed on her shoulder, gently shaking her from her thoughts.

"You alright?" Shirou asked, eyes soft in concern.

"I'm fine," Glynda nodded tersely before she took a mental step back.

She needed to mourn later-

Actually, this would be the best time to mourn, Glynda realized. She needed to get to work but she needed to stabilize herself. Let herself start to come to grips with the loss of Ozpin, Pyrrha, several students, numerous lives, and Beacon itself.

"Please," she nearly whispered; throat tight from the effort of holding back her tears.

Shirou examined her face for a long moment before finally nodding.

"Alright," he said, laying down the sponge in his other hand before stepping back. "I'll let you take the dishes today. And-"

Shirou hesitated before awkwardly patting her shoulder again. "-you don't have to hold back for anyone. Take your time and let yourself grieve. There is no shame in grieving for people you have lost."

Glynda rigidly held herself, not trusting herself to break down if she reacted to Shirou's words.

Shirou gave one last awkward pat before stepping away and letting her have the sink.

Glynda stepped forward physically grabbing the sponge to start on the dishes, ignoring Shirou as he walked to his bed and started going through his bag.

If she cried while running the water, Shirou didn't say anything to indicate if he heard.


	5. Chapter 5: Placing onto a Sword Stand

**A.N. Sorry for the delay, I did quite a bit of work on Technician's Order the last week. Also, I've found that as I have exhausted my reserve of mostly written chapters, I may need to drop to a post every other week.**

**This is when we start settling into the story as we finish off the first arc. Combat is a part of Glynda and Shirou's way of life and how they met but now we will be settling into a more sedate pace.**

* * *

**Chapter 5: Placing into a Sword Stand**

After finishing the dishes, taking a shower, wiping away any traces of her tears, and completing her morning rituals, Glynda was ready to face the day.

She brought up her scroll and scowled as she looked over her schedule and To-Do List.

_Patrol Vytal Festival, Meet with VIP from Vacuo, Meeting with Ozpin at 2, Negotiate for Huntsmen to help patrol Menagerie, Commence preparations for Award Ceremony…_

All useless now that the Vytal Festival had been ruined. The falling into open warfare with the Grimm and White Fang simply made most of her list flat out impossible.

As for Ozpin…

Glynda pushed aside the grief by reminding herself that Ozpin wouldn't be gone forever. He'd be back, in a new body with a new plan now that the old plan had been foiled.

Even if they would have to act like strangers for a time until Ozpin was strong enough to protect himself.

Glynda inhaled, disciplining her emotions before opening her eyes again.

Yes, she'd just have to postpone that meeting with Ozpin. For several years.

Refocusing her attention back on her list, Glynda deleted the items that couldn't happen now. She knew for a fact that the White Fang had murdered Menagerie's ambassador for being a 'traitor to the Faunus'.

Okay, what did she need to do instead?

The sound of the door opening caused Glynda to look up from typing in her first item.

Shirou entered the door, blinking.

"Oh, didn't expect you here," Shirou said before walking over to his bag and bending down.

Glynda eyed him, gaze momentarily wandering to his butt, and wondered what he had come back for. Also, wasn't there something she was supposed to do with Shirou?

Ah yes, she was going to have him meet Ozpin.

Even if he wasn't a magician which, after a good night's sleep to overcome her initial knee jerk reaction, seemed less likely. The man at least did have power comparable to that of a Maiden's. In addition, he would be a valuable ally now that Salem had her own Maiden. And if Shirou's claim to using magic was true, it would be worth getting in touch with Ozpin using emergency procedures.

Unfortunately, their emergency plans had all counted on technology that was dependent on the CCT or Qrow, who was taking his nieces back to Patch today. And she disliked having to rely on Qrow. He was an exceptionally skilled fighter and information gatherer but you couldn't rely on him to be civilized about anything or to even stop drinking for one.

But needs must. She had no other option with the Tower down. She'd have to send a message by Qrow. In order to do that, she would need to find him, preferably before he left the city with his nieces. Which would now be the first thing on her new To-Do list.

"Is there something you need?" she asked, putting her scroll down in her lap.

"Nah, just grabbing some more posters of my sister," Shirou casually commented as he straightened, some papers in his hands. "Found a few good spots to put them up but ran out at the last one I found. Also, it is a good way to find people to help as well."

"Your sister?" Glynda asked in curiosity and a little worry, looking a little closer at the paper which had a large image of a girl on it. Putting facts together, Glynda got a conclusion. "Is she missing?"

"Yes," Shirou affirmed, his face solemn, his eyes tight with worry. "She was kidnapped several years ago. I managed to get her free but lost her almost as soon as we got out. I've been looking for her for… a few years now."

"Quite some time," Glynda said, mind racing. "Could I see one of those posters?"

"Sure, why not," Shirou agreed amiably as he walked over and handed her one.

Glynda examined the hand-sketched portrait of a young black-haired girl with golden brown eyes. Miyu was adorable, Glynda noted. Quite young too judging by the birth year. Much younger than her estimate of Shirou's age.

But she had never seen anyone like Miyu. And Miyu was not a name associated to any form of color like Remnant's recent naming traditions. She would have noticed if she had heard it.

"Is this picture accurate?" Glynda asked before realizing the confusion her question could generate. "I mean, is this recent?"

"She probably has grown since then," Shirou admitted. "Should be a teenager by now but I have no idea what she would look like now after puberty."

"I have seen black haired girls with brown eyes," Glynda admitted, tapping her scroll to see if she still had any pictures of her students. Regrettably, without the CCT, she couldn't access the school databanks. "But I haven't met anyone named Miyu though."

"Unfortunate," Shirou sighed with resignation. Almost like he was expecting it, Glynda noticed with a wince.

Glynda hastened to assure Shirou that she could help. "But I can send out word to my colleagues and associates…" Glynda trailed off as she remembered that the CCT tower was down and that she couldn't communicate with anyone by scroll.

"Do you think they could help?" Shirou asked hopefully.

"I would be surprised if not even one of them had never met her," she said confidently. She and Ozpin had contacts with schools, not only their fellow Hunter schools but the preliminary schools as well. And Miyu's age fell right into that range. It would just be a couple of calls away.

Only she literally couldn't make those calls.

"The problem is, I can't call them," Glynda gestured towards her scroll. "We need the CCT tower up and running to make any calls. But once it is back up, I can call them and ask about your sister. If they don't know her, then at the very least they should be able to engage their colleagues, one of whom is bound to know her."

Shirou stiffened. "Telecommunications are down?" he asked in worry.

"Yes," Glynda reaffirmed. "The CCT technology is the basis of cross-continental communications. Without it, no one can make calls throughout the entire world."

"And that would apply to emails as well?" Shirou asked, apprehension growing on his face.

"Yes," Glynda answered before she glanced back down to the poster. The poster which only had an email address and no physical address to contact.

"Oh, Shirou," She whispered, the magnitude of what had just crossed Shirou's mind striking her. Without the CCT, he couldn't hear back from anyone if they did know Miyu. "I'm so sorry. I'm sure that you'll find her."

"It's alright," Shirou said heavily after a pause. He probably was collecting his emotions. "I just need to help get the CCT tower back up. Where is it?"

"Beacon," Glynda told him, closing her eyes, heart dropping in her stomach as she told him the bad news. "But we would need to get rid of the Grimm first and the Wyvern before a team from Atlas can start rebuilding the tower."

Silence draped the room as Shirou sat down.

"And while the tower is down, nowhere on Remnant can communicate?" Shirou asked with a heavy heart.

"Yes. Only by word of mouth or messengers now." Glynda opened her eyes and looked at Shirou who had a pained look on his face. "Even at the earliest, I estimate that it would take at least three weeks for word to make it to Atlas, a CCT team to come down from Atlas, and then to repair the tower. Possibly longer depending on the damage sustained."

Shirou covered his face with his hands as he thought.

"And this is the most dangerous time on Remnant," his muffled voice drifted through his hands. "Everyone will be in a panic, people will evacuate their homes, chaos will spread and crime will spike."

"And the Grimm will be attacking everywhere, politics will become tense, and the Kingdoms will be on the brink of war," Glynda filled in, heart sinking as she faced the full implications of Salem's attack.

"Yes- what was that about the Grimm?" Shirou asked, removing his hands from his face. "Aren't they always attacking?"

"Don't you know?" Glynda asked with a frown. This was stuff taught in every school. "The Grimm are attracted to negativity."

"I hope you are talking about negative electrical poles?" Shirou asked, some wit creeping into his voice.

"How you know about magnetism but not Grimm is a mystery," Glynda dead-panned back.

"I've had an out-of-the-world curriculum," Shirou drily responded.

"Your curriculum could have used more practical classes such as Grimm Studies instead of astrology," Glynda snarked before sighing. "But no. The Grimm are attracted to the negative emotions of humanity."

"Huh," Shirou said before falling silent again.

"Did you not know that?" Glynda asked, eyes narrowing in suspicion. Did Shirou not get a formal education?

"No, I didn't," Shirou confirmed.

"Shirou," Glynda started before deciding just to be direct about it. "That is something that everyone knows. Every school, every teacher knows to teach that to their students. There is no way you _couldn't_ have known."

"I never completed my education," Shirou admitted.

Glynda straightened up in shock.

"Never completed!" She yelled, offended at the waste. "What do you mean, you never completed your education?"

"Well, I was once in school," Shirou admitted, looking up at her, his elbows on his knees. "But then my sister was kidnapped so I spent my time trying to get her back. She is more important than a General Education degree anyway."

Glynda lowered her glasses to better glare at Shirou.

"Even if your priorities are focused on your younger sister, it does not excuse the neglect of your education." Glynda lectured. "An education is one of the most valuable things you can possess."

"Perhaps," Shirou said non-committedly. "But my sister was taken. Everything else just, became less important after that."

Glynda could see the reasoning behind it. But…

"Why didn't you go to the police then?" Glynda asked, pushing her glasses back onto her nose. "Leave the authorities or the professionals to do the job while you finish your schooling."

"They wouldn't even be able to find her, much less rescue her," Shirou growled. "I was the only one who would."

Glynda frowned at that. She knew that life rarely went the way it was supposed to. The Grimm and the casualties they inflicted had made that clear enough over her career.

But why was Shirou so sure that the police wouldn't have been able to find her?

"Welp, can't be helped," Shirou said with a sigh before climbing to his feet. "Better go find the army."

"The army?" Glynda asked in a bit of surprise at the change in subject. "What for? For all that they do, I don't think finding your sister is one of their objectives. Especially at the present."

"The army would be the ones who go and retake Beacon right? So I'm going to see if they need any help with that." Shirou said reasonably. If you were a person who had no education. "That and I would rather not walk up to Beacon. The climb up the cliffs is a bit much for my tastes."

"The last I heard, Atlas's army was planning on withdrawing from the city," Glydna recalled what the officers had been saying last night. "The recent massacres created a wave of hatred towards Atlas and James felt it was a good idea to withdraw before more Grimm came."

"And before any riots start," Shirou sighed before standing up. "Well, shouldn't Vale have its own army? I can go talk with them."

Glynda couldn't help herself. She smiled, barely holding in a snort.

"Vale's military has been a joke for decades now," she told him, her smile dancing behind her expression. "Not even the officers expect the army to be any good. Vale's council likes to forget that they even have an army."

"What?" Shirou said turning to face her from next to the door. "You mean, Vale invited a foreign army to come in and occupy their capital city without even having a reliable military force? They just counted on telling the general that if they wanted him to leave, he would just _leave_?"

Somehow, Shirou's completely disbelieving expression struck Glynda as funny.

"Yes," She affirmed, nodding her head to Shirou's increasing disbelief. "Yes, they did. If you want fighting done in Vale, you either go to the Hunters, as led by the Headmaster of Beacon Academy, the Air Force union, or the Engineer's corps. The Engineers if you want to have automatic turrets and walls built for defense, or Hunters if you want a group that can actually walk anywhere faster than a slug. And the Air Force union will only accept your request if you want an escort for a ship."

Shirou gaped at her before shaking his head.

"And just when I thought this world couldn't get any crazier," Shirou said under his breath to himself.

"We live, we used to live, in a time of peace," Glynda defended. "The Great War and the Faunus Right Revolution are over and we won't be descending to fighting again. Vacuo hasn't recovered from it and the other kingdoms are still trying to expand back out to their old boundaries. There is no point in us fighting each other."

Shirou looked like he wanted to object, like he didn't believe what everyone knew, but he held back his tongue.

"So, who should I talk with about getting transportation to Beacon?" Shirou asked.

"Normally, the ticket office. The air buses run on the hour," Glynda said drily. "But for a military expedition…"

Glynda scowled at the reminder of the current lack of organization. Beacon's fleet of vehicles was still up at Beacon. Their pilots were either dead or scattered down here. She had no clue where anyone was and, without scrolls working, no way to find out.

"I'm not sure," she ended up admitting. "Before we could try to reclaim Beacon, we need to reclaim Vale, otherwise the citizens and politicians will flip. And before we can do that, we need to find and organize the Hunters. The students too while we're at it. Only after we have the citizens feeling safe and our Hunters ready to fight, can we get around to actually trying to eject the Grimm from Beacon."

"And to find them, you need the communications," Shirou said, frowning. "So, is there a way to just fly me up and drop just me off? I might as well start clearing off the Grimm while waiting."

"Except," Glynda hated to admit it. "There are too many flying Grimm over Beacon. The Grimm have been flocking to the corpse of the Wyvern and the flying ones are almost migrating there. It would be a one-way suicide expedition for a single Bullhead and even then I can't think of a way to guarantee a landing. If we had more than one, the chances rise but…"

Glynda trailed off, hating that she didn't even know how many of Beacon's Bullheads had survived and were in Vale.

"But you need the organization for more than one," Shirou sighed. "All right, so nothing I can do about Beacon."

"I'm sorry," Glynda apologized. She wanted to help but she couldn't in good conscience risk the lives of her remaining personnel for a suicide mission. And even if she did have the people, the internal politics of Vale would hog-tie her hands from lending aid until the citizens of Vale felt safe.

Well, safer at the very least. Glynda didn't doubt that public confidence in their safety would be rather low after the battle. Vale hadn't seen real combat inside the city for decades until this year when they had two separate incidents.

Which would mean that more Grimm would be attacking the city, drawn by the constant low-level fear and insecurity.

At least for now, it should be quieter. All the Grimm that had been nearby, as in all the way out to Mountain Glenn, had already came to Vale. It should take some time before their numbers replenished.

Glynda hoped. She needed information too! But with her scroll unable to communicate, she couldn't receive reports or calls either.

"It's not your fault," Shirou said resignedly. "You didn't cause the White Fang to attack or bring the Grimm here or reprogram the robots. You caused no part of this atrocity."

_It's not your fault._

Glynda was silent, her heart touched.

How much had she blaming herself for this, she wondered as she felt her eyes burn from unshed tears. She was the deputy head-mistress of Beacon one of the symbols for the safety of Vale.

And she had failed to protect. Salem's agent had won, not only ruining the Vytal Festival but killing Ozpin, stealing the power of the Fall Maiden, and destroying Beacon. And while they had managed to keep Vale from falling, the loss of so many symbols in rapid succession must have spread terror across the entire world.

Which would bring the Grimm, which would cause more fear, which would bring more Grimm.

And the cycle would continue, decimating Hunters and causing thousands, if not millions, to die until the world stabilized again.

All because she had failed.

"Hey, you alright?" Shirou asked, his face crossed in a frown as he looked over at her from his seated position. "You look like someone killed your dog."

"Oh," The man winced. "I'm sorry if someone did. I didn't mean to-"

"I'm fine," Glynda said abruptly. She didn't trust herself to speak without a tremor in her voice right now.

She took a couple of deep breaths before speaking again. "I've never even had a dog anyway."

Shirou was silent, his brow creased.

"Do you want to talk about it?" He asked finally.

Glynda considered it before answering.

"There is nothing to discuss," she simply said.

Even if he was a magician, she couldn't tell him everything. Secrets like Salem's existence were secrets for a reason, and she didn't want to touch on them.

Shirou studied her a bit more, making Glynda want to shift a bit in her seat.

But she was the deputy headmistress, headmistress now, of Beacon. She did not act like a nervous school girl.

"All right," he said slowly, his head cocked, still staring at her.

"What are you going to do, Shirou?" Glynda asked to get him to stop looking at her like that. Like he was trying to see through her. It made her feel awkward, like she was a decade or two younger.

"Me?" Shirou asked, somewhat surprised. "What am I going to do? In regards to Beacon and Miyu?"

Glynda nodded, glad at the successful change of topic.

"What can I do?" He barked out some self-scorning laughter. "I can't build a new telecommunications system or tower. I don't have the time, money, or knowledge to do that. I can't get transportation to Beacon and climbing those cliffs alone is suicide with all the Grimm all around. I'll be half dead of exhaustion by the time I got to the top. I can't wipe all the Grimm out in one strike else I destroy the CCT tower as well. Not to mention that if I am close enough to shoot the Grimm, the cliffs are in my way so I can't _see_ where the Grimm are and I'm not some legendary Archer who can shoot without knowing where my target is."

"There is nothing I can do," Shirou sighed. "But if I do nothing, then nothing will be done. I can't stop. I have to keep looking. But without the CCT, there is little point in looking. Getting the CCT back up so that I can hear from others is the best way to search right now."

"Maybe I can go to the army. Find out if there is some unit that wants to reclaim Beacon," Shirou shrugged. "There is bound to be some sort of task force on it. Maybe Atlas will leave some men to help. I don't know. If nothing else, I could find some Hunters and see what they would need in order to take back Beacon."

A pause.

"Shirou, I am a Huntress," Glynda said slowly. Didn't he know already? Had she told him?

"I thought you said you were a teacher?" Shirou asked, surprise in his features. "At Beacon."

"Yeeees," Glynda said, leading him on to the obvious conclusion.

He still looked a little confused.

Glynda sighed. "Shirou, _all_ the teachers at Beacon are Hunters. Beacon is a school _for_ Huntsmen and Huntresses. How can we train the protectors of tomorrow if we aren't Hunters as well?"

"That makes sense," Shirou agreed after a moment of thought. "Experienced professionals would help improve the quality of education using know-how learned from direct experience. Would help save more lives that way."

Glynda smiled.

"So if you are both a teacher and a Huntress, then I suppose you would know who I should talk to," Shirou concluded. "So, who should I speak with about getting your campus back? I presume you would like it back sometime before summer vacation is over?"

"Our lessons do go a lot smoother when we have classrooms to teach in," Glynda agreed with a smirk. "But I do know who you should talk to. It is rather obvious."

Shirou blinked at her before frowning and thinking for a bit.

"Peter Port?" he gave a haphazard guess.

Glynda stared flatly at him. "Does our school look like it is- never mind. Despite its current desolate state, Peter is not our Headmaster."

Who would trust Peter to be in charge of a school? He would take the entire student body on one of his adventures and half of them would never come back as they ran from one adventure to the next. She knew her students and most of them would choose to try and top several of Peter's stories rather than do even one essay.

And then she would have to track them all down, one at a time in order to give the final exams because while that had been how Peter had learned to be a Huntsman, it wasn't feasible on a large scale. Peter had learned the skills he needed in the field and then passed the fourth-year exams, including the academic ones, when he came back to the city.

They couldn't have that many unregistered Hunters wandering around like Peter had done. It would be chaos!

But to be fair to Shirou, Glynda currently didn't know where half of her students were so she could see how Shirou might think that.

"Guess not," he said, drawing another conclusion. "So, someone obvious, someone I already probably know. Peter's wife? Can't be Bart, he's the history teacher…"

Glynda pushed up her glasses so that she could pinch the bridge of her nose.

She swears, this man gives her as much of a headache as Ozpin sometimes.

"Um, I don't really know," Shirou said awkwardly. "I haven't really kept up with the news."

"I'm the deputy headmistress," she said exasperatedly. Upon catching sight of Shirou's mouth opening, she continued. "Yes, I am also the combat professor. I had both positions while Ozpin was still around."

"Ozpin, Ozpin," Shirou frowned, looking like he was trying to recall something. "Wasn't he the man you bullied me into agreeing to meet?"

"I did not bully," Glynda defended herself. "I simply insisted. And I do want you to meet him. If there was anyone who would know about magecraft or magic, it would be him."

"But he is dead," Shirou helpfully pointed out. "Or at least, you and the other professors were talking about him like he had died."

Glynda kept her mouth firmly shut. She knew that Ozpin wouldn't stay dead. But she wasn't in the business of making herself look insane, which she would if she told Shirou that Ozpin wasn't truly dead.

Also, Ozpin's secrets weren't hers to give. She shouldn't tell a stranger about things that were held private to Ozpin.

"Be that as it may," she said instead, trying to get the conversation over to a different track. "I am the next in line for leadership of Beacon Academy. If you want to help us reclaim Beacon, we would be more than happy to accept your help."

"Actually," Glynda trailed off as a thought struck her.

Shirou was going to stick around here and help. To be honest, they needed the help. And she needed to have Shirou meet with Ozpin's next body anyways.

So why not keep him here?

And there was one thing she could do to keep Shirou around for a while. For four years in fact. It would also take care of him not finishing his education. And if Ozpin didn't come back in four years, they would have bigger concerns.

Now all she needed to do was to sell it.

"Actually… what?" Shirou asked, obviously wondering what she had been about to say.

"Shirou," Glynda asked, determined and, to tell the truth, a tad nervous. She had never done this without Ozpin before. "What do you think about joining Beacon Academy and graduating as a professional Huntsman? We are paid rather generously to travel and fight, and you are exceptionally good at the latter."

She was telling the truth. Very few Hunters could take down a Goliath. Fewer could solo an entire herd of them. And if someone had, then usually they were a Maiden using their powers to do so.

"Well, it sounds good and I wouldn't mind doing so in normal circumstances," Shirou scratched his head as he replied. "It would certainly make filling out a passport much easier. But I would rather look for my sister first and take care of getting a license after I find her."

"I understand," Glynda said. And she did. Any sibling worthy of the title would naturally prioritize their relative's well-being. "That is why I am offering a deal. Come to Beacon, study here for a few years, and while you do that, I can put out through my contacts and the other Huntsmen and Huntress Academies to look for your sister. If someone finds her, then we can easily contact you and reunite the two of you. It would be a few thousand people looking for her. If they don't find her, you can resume your search after getting your accreditation with much greater ease. And there are places where civilians, no matter how strong they are, simply do not have access. Places that a Huntsman instead of a civilian could get access to. It might take some time now, but it would allow you greater resources and help you find her much faster."

It was true. More regimented places like Atlas had entire sectors forbidden to everyone but Hunters. And Menagerie still held anti-human prejudices. The only way to access the entire area of those continents would require a man to be a Huntsman as they were needed to fight the Grimm which were everywhere other than the occupied cities.

Well, used to be everywhere but the cities, Glynda thought as she glanced out the window at the darkened city of Vale. Now the Grimm occupy portions of the heart of Vale. Nowhere was safe now.

"And searching through Vale now would be difficult," Shirou mused. "Refugees would be fleeing everywhere. I could move on from one village only for Miyu to move into it after I leave. We would miss each other and take decades to redo it all."

Glynda blinked. "Sounds like you have already considered that flaw in your search."

Shirou shrugged. "Considered it. I could have tried to use the government databases but the price that I needed to get through Mistral's red tape was beyond my means and they don't record children anyways. Only choice was to look for her on my own. But if she was also moving around, then I could end up missing her completely. The only way around that was to leave something behind that would let Miyu find me. Ergo, the wanted posters. They might not help me find Miyu but they will let her know that I am looking for her and give her a way to contact me if she sees one."

"A wise choice. Or at least it was before the CCT tower went down," Glynda nodded in agreement. "If she is looking for you, which I have very little doubt about seeing your concern for her, then leaving a trail of bread crumbs behind would allow her to find you. "

"Only the bread crumbs are made of paper," Shirou grinned.

"Yes, much less edible." Glynda said dryly. "Certainly a wiser choice than leaving food items where anyone, especially a hungry teen, could eat them."

"And oddly enough, these crumbs tend not to go mysteriously missing when the geese fly in," Shirou commented with a smile on his face before becoming serious. "It sounds like a good idea. But I was under the impression that Beacon was currently out of commission."

Glynda did not sigh at the reminder that they would need to recapture Beacon as well. "Yes, the current residents don't seem to be encouraging our return. They appear to be laboring under the misapprehension that they can steal our academy and we won't do anything to take it back. We just need to recover Vale first and make it habitable again before training more Hunters."

"And I do need to search Vale for Miyu," Shirou said, as he started to slowly nod his head. "If she is somewhere here, then I need to find her before the Grimm do."

"And our staff are currently engaged in search and destroy missions here," Glynda pointed out. "We certainly won't object to bringing along a helping hand. We'll even consider taking two."

She glanced down at Shirou's two scimitars buckled at his waist.

"Wait," Shirou suddenly furled his brow. "Didn't Hunter Academies require their students to come through special schools and programs? I've never been to any school on Remnant."

"That is how most of our students join," Glynda agreed as she walked around the table to approach Shirou. Fortunately, she had aced her history classes back in her own days as a Huntress student, so she knew how the Hunter Academies had been established. "But it wasn't always that way. The Hunter Academies are based off the premise of the vocational college. We'll accept anyone that can make it through our qualifying exams. That was how the first generation of Huntsmen and Huntresses started after the Great War. Those prep schools weren't around back then so we recruited from among the soldiers and veterans who still wanted to fight the Grimm. We have no age restriction and our students receive governmental scholarships for the duration of their training."

"As for the exams," Glynda waved off the idea of Shirou not passing them. "They are much easier than taking out a single Goliath, much less everything I have seen you do over the past day. I don't think you need to worry about a lack of schooling prior to Beacon. We have taken in students with little to no formal education before. You might need to take some more history classes than your fellow students and you might end up doing remedial classes for a few years. But you don't have a bad mind and you seem to be quite determined. If you can apply half of that determination to find your sister to your school work, it would not surprise me if you manage to complete a full education in four years at Beacon."

"Hmm," Shirou considered. "And what if I refuse?"

"Well, I will still put out word through my contacts. I am not heartless enough to deny a man help in searching for his sister," Glynda answered, still pacing. She and Ozpin had recruited talent who had gotten into trouble before. Like Ruby Rose and Blake Belladona. But that was usually done with the pair of them, not just herself. And Ozpin did most of the talking. "But it will be harder to get in contact with you and even harder to get you to where we find your sister if we first need to find you. And with the CCT down, no one will even be able to efficiently communicate across the waters until we get Beacon's CCT back up and running again."

She shrugged. "If I don't know where you are, I'll certainly try to get word out to you. But it would be ironic if we end up holding Miyu at Beacon for four years and graduated her as a Huntress while we try to find you instead of your sister."

Shirou snorted. "That's a good point. So, I need Beacon in order to receive communication from all the flyers I've already put up. And if I help you reestablish both Beacon and Vale, it will allow me to search for Miyu here until I can be certain that Miyu isn't in the city of Vale."

"Also," Glynda stopped walking and turned to Shirou as she realized something else she could use to tempt him to Beacon. "We do send our students out with professors into the field and city for assignments. Just because you are at Beacon, doesn't mean that you can't use your breaks and extracurricular activities to search for your sister while here."

Shirou looked much more interested now. And at least it would mean that one of the students out wandering the town isn't smashing places up like clubs, stores, docks, and highways. It would be a pleasant surprise to not have a student looking to see how much trouble they could generate in one night.

_'Yes',_ Glynda celebrated in her mind. '_Stay here. Stay at Beacon. At least long enough for me to find Ozpin's successor and have him interview you.' _

"Alright," Shirou slowly nodded. "If that is the case, then I'll guess I'll be going to college."

"Then let me be the first to welcome you to Beacon, Shirou Emiya," Glynda said with a smile on her face as she shook hands with her future student. "Please excuse the lack of facilities."

"Pleased to be here, Glynda, no, Professor Goodwitch" Shirou smiled as he shook her hand. "Even if pamphlets took some 'artistic liberties' with the facilities."

For some reason, Glynda felt her smile become more brittle when Shirou addressed her with 'Professor Goodwitch' rather than her first name.

* * *

Shirou dug through the bag of his remaining possessions, brushing past his folded-up clothes, looking for the paperwork and passport, which he thinks he remembered packing at the very bottom of the bag.

Glynda needed his records and without the CCT, paper was the only way to do it.

Admittedly, she didn't need them right now. In fact, she wasn't even here to take the papers, having just left to see a colleague about a message she needed him to take and deliver before he left the city.

Shirou wondered who the man or recipient was. Was he her boyfriend?

Shriou frowned. He shouldn't be prying into his beautiful professor's romantic situation. She wasn't interested in him and he didn't have time for a relationship anyways. Besides, it would be rude to pry into someone's relationship status.

Unless it was Miyu's relationship. Then Shirou had the elder brother's prerogative of interrogating… making sure that the boy was worthy of his sister.

On an unrelated note, Shirou noted some of his swords and weapons that would make excellent tools for …_persuading_ an unworthy boy to go looking for love with someone else.

But an important element of that train of thought led Shirou to frown as he finally found and pulled out the binder containing the paperwork that was his identity in this new world.

Miyu.

He didn't feel right about entering a school for the next four years while he still didn't know where Miyu was. But if Glynda had been right, then this would open doors for him to search in locations that he couldn't reach on his own. And if he got a lead on Miyu, he could always drop out of school.

But it would be better if he could get paid while searching. It wasn't easy to find the money he needed to live and to pay for his search. Usually getting it required him to settle down in a town for a month or two, work as many part-time jobs as he could find, live in a rundown apartment that he would negotiate to rent at a discount in exchange for fixing it up, and give up on sleeping if any of the jobs needed overtime. Collect several paychecks and build up a large enough bank account until he leaves and continue searching for Miyu. Run out of money a few months later and repeat.

But it was still a significant portion of time to just earn money. A lot of wasted time that he could have used to search for Miyu. Now if only he didn't need something as unimportant as food for something called living and walking. But unless it was Halloween, he didn't think Miyu would want to see him as thin as a skeleton.

So, without any alternatives, he had arrived the natural conclusion that he needed money. Money to eat, money to live, money to travel, and money to find Miyu. It would be nice if he got paid to travel instead of paying for food or tickets to make it to the next town. It would mean that he could spend more on hiring professionals to help search. The detectives in Mistral had not been cheap, even with the discount he managed to negotiate in exchange for fixing some things up in their office.

At least the agency had turned out to be worth it. They had given him the best lead he had ever found. Even though it had turned out that Cinder wasn't Miyu, even just a sighting of a woman who looked like an adult Miyu was better than anything else he had found so far.

Years of searching with only one lead, a false one at that. It was tough on a man. Yet for Miyu's sake, he would searching a hundred years with no leads if he had to.

Shirou sighed as he looked at the forged passport and birth certificate. Oh, the information was as accurate as he could make it, age, gender, appearance, and all that but he didn't have a hometown on Remnant or any one of a number of different things like a government ID number or a birth record. That stuff was all false and cost a pretty penny to get forged but without it, he wouldn't have been able to enter Vale without getting thrown in prison.

And he didn't think Miyu was in prison. She wasn't the kind of girl to break rules and was too cute to be held responsible for things she didn't do.

Shirou nodded along with his completely biased opinion.

However, the cost of coming to Vale was that he was almost out of cash. Only a few hundred lien left before he would need to stop and find a part time job or three. But if Glynda was right, then learning at Beacon would allow him to enter a job market that was not only highly paid but encouraged travel. Travel to locations full of people that needed someone to save them from the Grimm.

The dream that Shirou had discarded beckoned at Shirou and he unconsciously set his mouth into a grimace as he reminded himself that he was no hero. He couldn't be a hero.

He had condemned a world to death. He was Miyu's brother, not a hero.

He needed to find Miyu. To protect her.

And if Beacon allowed him to search for her when class wasn't in session, then even going to Beacon wasn't going to be a big drain on his time. It would limit how far he could go, but even then, Vale was a big kingdom. It would take time to explore even the city alone, much less the villages and towns outside of the metropolis. And to be through, he would need to search the entire kingdom, an endeavor that would take years.

And he wouldn't have to pay for his upkeep thanks to Beacon providing food and lodging.

Did Glynda ever say if Beacon had scholarships? They would help if he could start saving up more for when he resumed his search.

* * *

"So, what do you need?" Qrow asked, alcohol flask on one hip, Ozpin's cane on the other, and an unconscious niece slung over a shoulder like a sack of potatoes. Behind him at the seats of the ferry terminal, sat Yang, glassy eyed as she dealt with the shock of her missing arm, and the remnants of Team JNPR, without their most famous member. Ren was sitting between Nora and Jaune, patting them both on the back, all three looking like they had already shed many tears over their loss.

Glynda felt a stab of sympathy. If she had had a favorite student among their year, it would have been Pyrrha. She could emphasize with JNPR's loss of their friend and teammate.

Unfortunately, she didn't have long to talk with Qrow. The ferry was pulling into sight and the group was going to be boarding it.

"I need a message delivered to Ozpin," Glynda said, keeping her voice low to avoid eavesdroppers. A flash of white hair in the corner of her eye caused her to turn her head before realizing that it wasn't Shirou but an old woman. "I met a person, _a man,_ who claimed to use magic and I want him to verify the claim."

Qrow snorted but dropped his voice. "That's impossible. You know that. Magic was lost when the gods left with only a few fragments. And last I heard, a Maiden couldn't be a man."

"I know," Glynda agreed. "Except I watched him with my own eyes conjure swords and arrows out of thin air, throw them at enemies without using hands, and change concrete rubble into an arrowhead. In addition, he also pullied out a weapon that matched the output of a low-tier Dust Missile which he used to wipe out a herd of Goliaths in one strike. All of that without even having Aura as a scratch wound he received from an Alpha Beowolf was still there before he did most of those feats."

"Hmm," Qrow hummed in thought. "It could have been a very versatile Semblance or an illusion Semblance. But I see your point. That's a bit too much for it to be normal and too coincidental for him to make that claim to you of all people."

"Precisely," Glynda said quickly as a quick glance showed that the ferry was docking even as she spoke. "Will you tell Ozpin that I need him to interview one Shirou Emiya? I've enrolled him into Beacon to keep an eye on him so he'll be here for the next four years."

"Alright," Qrow agreed as he waved his group of kids up. "I'll tell him. I would wish you luck with Beacon, but you know what kind of luck I have."

"I'd appreciate it if you kept your horrendous luck to yourself," Glynda responded.

The unshaven alcoholic laughed before setting off to the ferry which just finished unloading what few people were coming into Vale.

Glynda watched as four of her students walked past her, all slumped down and depressed, even the usually hyperactive Nora.

Glynda's heart twisted within her chest.

"Team JNPR," she said, speaking up on an urge. It would break her mask of cold teacher that was so important for installing the discipline the trainees needed but she was their teacher. Helping her students was her job! "Remember, the people we lose are never truly lost as long as we remember them. Keep the memory of the girl you knew as Pyrrha Nikos alive rather than her legend that others only saw."

_That should be enough emotional aid,_ Glynda judged. But she needed to maintain a clear distance to her students else they might get distracted and start thinking about illicit student-teacher romances that would just waste their time, annoy her, and potentially get themselves killed.

"So in whatever mischief and trouble you get into," Glynda hardened her gaze at the students. "Don't risk your lives pointlessly. You are the future Huntsmen and Huntresses of Vale and the teammates of someone who risked her life so that others could live. Act like it."

The three students blinked at each other before turning back to her.

"Thank you, Professor Goodwitch," Jaune said choking up but acting as team leader even as his eyes brimmed with tears. "We'll try. We'll always remember her."

"Come on kids!" Qrow shouted from the crowded walkway to the ferry. "We haven't got all day!"

The three students started after him, leaving Glynda watching as five of her students left the city.

And she wondered when she would ever see them again.

* * *

Glynda opened the door to her residence, sighing as she found it empty. Shirou had apparently already left.

But, Shirou hadn't left nothing behind. On her bed, Glynda could see a Mistralian passport and some paper documents lying in a protective cover.

Annoyingly, Shirou had been on her mind while she had looked for Qrow. Shirou's smile, his appearance, his words. She found herself remembering him in the most random of places.

_It's almost like having a new crush_, she thought to herself as she picked up the paperwork, intending to get started on filling out his application right away. _Only I'm older and not a teenager anymore._

She wouldn't mind if she had a crush on the man. Shirou was able to keep up with her wit, made funny comments, and wasn't bad looking at all on top of it. And he was a good cook.

He also was definitely a family man if he had been looking for his sister for so long. It took high dedication to look for a missing sister for several years. Coincidentally, it took high dedication for a Huntsman to raise a good family.

And she needed to settle down someday if she wanted to have a family as well as a career.

Glynda shook her head as she placed the papers on the table before taking a seat.

She wasn't going to get married. She was too old by this point. Admittedly, Shirou was around her age so it wouldn't be impossible.

But she shouldn't be thinking like this. Even if the mere thought of wondering if they could marry was going too far.

But if she had even been thinking of marriage, that was probably a sign that she couldn't say that she might have a crush on Shirou.

She definitely had a crush on him.

But maybe he would just turn out like the rest of the men she had had crushes on from her teenage years and up. Perhaps he just looked good on first impression and turned out to be worse on closer inspection or was already married.

Actually, was Shirou married? She didn't recall if he wore a ring on his fingers or not. But the man had spent years looking for his sister, so he might not be. But nothing said he couldn't have gotten married before she was kidnapped or while he was looking for her.

Well, if he was, his paperwork would say so at least. Might as well see if he was the second type of man she would get a crush on. The already taken type.

Shirou Emiya, male, single, age-!

Glynda stood up in her shock.

No, that can't be right!

She read the paper again, hoping that she had misread a number.

Shirou Emiya, male, single, age 19.

Over a decade younger than her.

She has a crush on a man the age of her students.

What was she going to do?! She couldn't have a crush on one of her students! Especially not if he was a decade younger!

* * *

**For the Vale Army, I admit that I took some liberties. And if it doesn't make sense, that is alright. It fits in with half of RWBY when you think about it. And it certainly does explain why Vale asked a foreign general rather than one of their own to defend the tournament when they lost confidence in Ozpin.**

**And goodbye canon plot. Have fun wandering around Remnant! We'll stay right here in Vale where it is nice and safe.**

**(Looks at Shirou and his propensity for getting into trouble.) Nice and safe.**

**(Looks at nearby Beacon with the horde of Grimm settling in.) Nice and safe.**

**(Opens browser to search for an emergency shelter for sale.)**


	6. Chapter 6: Bothering the Teacher

**For those following the story, yes I did upload this chapter and then took it down. I had realized that despite writing a note to double check something, I hadn't done it before posting the chapter so I took it back down. After rewriting the scene in question, I have put it back up.**

**My apologies. I try to put out decent work, but this chapter isn't one of my best.**

**Chapter 6: Bothering the Teacher**

_The next day…_

"Glynda! We need someone to put the stairs back together in the City Hall! You will do that for the Council of Vale, right?"

Glynda would have glared if she wasn't aware of the political ramifications. Namely, making a petty enemy at a time when they couldn't afford any more.

But the city was in ruins and the Council wanted to use her Semblance to repair the fourth-largest building in the city after the Palace, Beacon, and the CCT Tower just so that they could hold meetings in their comfortable chairs?

But she needed the political good will of the rulers of Vale. They did control the budget after all.

"Of course," she said as she changed course towards the administrative building. "I can open up a slot of time in my schedule for the Council."

"Deputy Headmistress," the flunky said, before pointing to the Bullhead he had arrived in. "We have Councilor Hans Christian Clothes' private Bullhead available for you while he waits at City Hall."

Glynda stopped.

The Council still had their private Bullheads!? The city needed every airship they had for distribution and there still was an inadequate number but the Councilors were keeping their private property back for momentary conveniences?

Glynda didn't give her best glare to the flunky but compromised by giving one of her nastier ones. She supposed that it would cause trouble later as offending politicians, especially when they were selfish and stupid, wasn't an act you made unless you wanted trouble.

And Glynda had enough on her plate that she didn't need to seek more out.

But she couldn't help herself. This whole situation was irritating her.

* * *

"Glynda Goodwitch, Deputy Headmistress of Beacon, you have been summoned before the Council of Vale to answer the questions this body has over the institution known as Beacon. To begin with, we would like to ask you, what is the current status of Beacon Academy?"

"Overran but alive," she answered succinctly as she stood before the reigning council in Vale on their amphitheater like meeting room. "Our professors spent the Battle of Vale in defense of the city and to buy time for the evacuation from Amity Stadium/Colosseum. Our students were sent to Beacon to mount a defense but were unprepared for the dangerous Wyvern that attacked Beacon and the combined assaults of the Grimm, White Fang and the virus infected Atlasian Knights and Paladins. We were able to evacuate most of the students but we are lacking control over the campus grounds at the moment. However, causalities were not as horrendous as they could have been and most students will be able to return at a later date."

"I see," a Councilor said, hands steepled together in front of her at her large, expensive wooden desk as she looked down on the Deputy Headmistress of Beacon. "Do you think Vale would be benefitted by applying any budget at the current time towards Beacon?"

Glynda blinked at the sheer stupidity of the question.

"Yes, Councilor," she said, restraining her wit from verbally attacking the idiot in front of her. "Even if Beacon is unable to access its training facilities, we need the budget for retaking the facility and its repair."

"What if we didn't bother to retake it?" another councilor said. "What justification would the survivors of Beacon be able to offer up for their large budget in the future?"

Glynda stared at the idiot. She had guessed wrong as to which one was the sheer idiot among the councilors.

She wasn't the only one staring at the man like he had done something incredibly stupid. Multiple councilors were staring at the idiot among them.

"For one, _honored_ _Councilor_," Glynda said, false honey in her voice. "It would allow you to keep employing your current Huntsmen and Huntresses who are helping to keep the city safe after it was attacked. For another, it would allow us to continue producing Huntsmen and Huntresses in the future for the continued safety of the city."

"We'll discuss that matter later," a third councilor said, with a look at the idiot that declared that he was wondering how he could politically use the idiot. Probably throw him to the wolves of public opinion judging by the disgust and dislike hidden on his expression. "Rest assured, deputy Headmistress, that we will ensure that you continue to receive funding in the future. We are just trying to determine how to use the remaining funds of this fiscal year for the good of the city in these dark times."

Glynda silently approved of the forming plots of the third councilor. She didn't have time to waste on idiots who were in command and getting in everyone else's way.

But she also took note of it. Someone who was this ambitious in these circumstances warranted a closer eye in case they were tempted to work for Salem.

Now if only she had someone she could spare to take that closer look!

"Now, as for the matter of the demise of Headmaster Ozpin…"

* * *

"Miss Goodwitch! This is Lisa Lavender from Vale News Network. What is the plan for Beacon now that the Headmaster has fallen and the campus overran?"

Glynda blinked as her eyes adjusted from the relative darkness of the council chambers to bright noon sunlight. "I wasn't aware the news was up yet. I had thought the CCT was still down."

Did Shirou already manage to find a way up to Beacon and retake it?

Glynda immediately dismissed the idea. There was no way that she wouldn't have been told of it or any other attempt to retake Beacon.

"It is," Lisa Lavender agreed. "However, we have taken to both printing the news and distributing it through short-range wireless providers. The people deserve to know! Now, what can you tell us concerning-"

* * *

"Miss Goodwitch! This is Cyril Ian from Vale News Network. What is your statement concerning the rumored demise of Pyrrha Nikos after the disastrous end of the Vytal Festival Tournament?"

Glynda stopped in the streets as she looked at the man, who was holding a microphone to her face.

She didn't want to do this. She didn't want to deal with the media again right now and she had to get onto reconstructing the walls. But if she didn't assure the public now, then public morale would drop and Vale couldn't afford that.

Holding back her sigh while maintaining her public persona, she replied.

"Well, Ian, I can tell you that-"

* * *

"Hey, baby," a thug smirked at Glynda as she passed by the alley where he and a few friends were lurking. "Want to see something amazing?"

Glynda didn't dignify the horrible flirting attempt with a response.

Honestly, couldn't they do something productive rather than bothering her?

* * *

"Miss Goodwitch!"

* * *

"Miss Goodwitch!"

* * *

"Glynda Goodwitch!"

* * *

"Glynda?"

Sitting in a chair at her quarters, Glynda groaned out-loud before realizing that it wasn't someone else demanding something of her even though night had finally fallen.

"Sorry, Shirou," She forced a smile onto her face as she looked over to one of her roommates who was sitting on the ground next to his bed as he fixed some device he had brought back. Then she remembered that she should keep her emotional distance from him and the smile vanished off of her face. "It's been a long day. Is there something you need?"

"No," the man frowned, setting down the screwdriver and folding his arms over his sleeveless black undershirt that highlighted his muscular build. "I was actually wondering if you needed any help with anything."

Glynda looked away.

The man was just too attractive for his own good.

"I'm fine, Shirou," she reassured the man, refusing to stare any longer at her future student. No matter how sculpted his face was, or how his muscles rippled as he casually moved around, or how fine his strong, long legs were, or how good his cooking was, or how kind he was, or his humorous snark and wit that kept up with her own, or how his eyes would draw her own in, she shouldn't have a crush on her student.

No, she did not have a relapse this morning while she was still waking up and Shirou was moving around in the kitchen, a beauty in both sight and smell. All those qualities were just random thoughts in her head. She refused to give any admission to the implication of staring at Shirou for a couple of minutes until her brain finally fully switched on.

But she was an adult. She would ignore it. She would ignore her crush and refuse to act on it. Eventually, it would go away.

Either that or Shirou would graduate and then leave.

Glynda decided to ignore that pang of disappointment too.

But what else could she do? She couldn't give him trouble about her crush. It was originating from her and it would be wrong to start making trouble for him because of her own private issues.

She couldn't run away from it. Shirou was going to be one of her students. And right now, he didn't have anywhere else to sleep and neither did she. She couldn't kick him out of the barracks.

And she most certainly could not act on her irrational feelings!

No, all she could do was pretend that it wasn't there, that she didn't have a crush.

"If you're sure…" Shirou trailed off, disbelief evident in the tone of his voice. "You look like everything has gone wrong for you."

"No, just dealing with the politicians," Glynda admitted. "It went well enough, if you don't mind the usual… intelligence they have."

Shirou snorted, his lack of respect towards them obvious. "Should I expect a declaration of war anytime soon?"

"Fortunately, it was not a bad day," Glynda responded. It would be a nightmare if Vale decided to declare war now. "Only two counselors made an idiotic suggestion."

"Wow," Shirou sarcastically marveled. "Must have had a few got lost on way to the meeting."

Glynda didn't respond. She shouldn't smile. She shouldn't smile.

Even if she wanted to after that meeting and the rest of the day. And even if it was rude to the Council. Even if it was inappropriate.

"As a Huntress of Vale, I feel obligated to request that you do not speak of them like that when I am around to hear it," Glynda finally said, adjusting her glasses.

Shirou gave her a dry look. Obviously not believing that she was serious about the request.

She matched it with her professional stare. She was a professor. She would not lose this contest. She would not give in.

She would not show that she currently had a similar sentiment.

"Alright," Shirou finally conceded the point. "Maybe they are not that bad. I wouldn't know."

Glynda smirked as he looked away. She still had it.

* * *

Shirou felt a touch of shame at Glynda's reproach. She obviously felt responsible for the city so she owed loyalty to the rulers of Vale.

And he wouldn't have said such a thing to their faces or in front of Miyu. If it wasn't something that he would have encouraged Miyu to do, he probably shouldn't do it himself.

Unless it was for her, like killing those seven competitors in the Holy Grail War. Not something he ever wanted Miyu to do but he wouldn't hesitate to do again.

"So, is there something I can do to help tomorrow?" Shirou asked, changing the topic. Also, while looking for people to help and boards to put up notices on went well together, especially when it came to asking people if they had ever seen Miyu, it didn't help in getting the CCT back up.

"Hmm," Glynda hummed as she pulled out her scroll. She flicked it on and examined something. "I don't suppose you are any good at fixing turrets, are you?"

"Actually," Shirou perked up at something he could do. "I have fixed complex machinery before."

"Military grade turrets?" the blonde raised an eyebrow. "I don't recall that being on your transcripts, Shirou."

Leaving aside that Shirou didn't have any transcripts. But he did have a resume that he had left with the rest of his admission paperwork.

"Well, not anything like that," Shirou had to admit. "The military had their own technicians so I never worked on one before. But there isn't that much difference between one large complex machine and another if you have the blueprints and manual."

And Structural Analysis was very good at substituting for those. Not to mention it helped him to understand where the problem was and what wasn't working as it used to, which was the hardest part of fixing anything. Even with Dust putting up some interference, it didn't change the fact that Shirou had learned to tweak the basic spell to not set off the Dust.

Dust had some odd reactions to magecraft. Shirou had learned that when he made his first try at fixing a stove on Remnant really.

He had laid one hand on the kitchen stove and it literally blew up into a fireball as the Fire Dust decided that the spell wanted it to activate in one burst.

When the fireball had faded, Shirou had been left standing there with his eyebrows singed, hair on fire, shirt burning, and hand red with a second-degree burn.

He had been lucky it hadn't been worse and that the family hadn't charged him.

Fortunately, that was a long time ago.

"Are you any good at it?" Glynda asked, idly tapping the table while thinking.

"Good enough to make some money off repairing stuff without having the customer send it to the company," Shirou said modestly.

"Well, if that is the case," Glynda said, standing up and walking over, scroll in hand, to where Shirou was working on putting a device back together. "I'll copy the schematics over to your scroll and you can help put some turrets at the wall back together tomorrow."

"About that," Shirou felt slightly awkward as he watched the lovely woman walk towards him. "There might be a small problem. I don't have a scroll."

Glynda stopped dead.

"Shirou," she started, adjusting her glasses in disbelief. "Are you telling me that you don't have a scroll?"

"Yeah," Shirou shrugged. "Never wanted to buy one. Public terminals were common enough that I didn't need to buy a scroll and pay their associated the monthly bills. I would rather use the money to search for Miyu."

"I see," Glynda said, frowning disapprovingly at him. "Well then, Mr. Emiya. You will find that you will need a scroll to be a Huntsman at Beacon. Scrolls are critical for communication and spars."

"Spars?" Shirou asked, in confusion. "How would a scroll be important in a spar?"

"For gauging your Aura," Glynda trailed off as she remembered that Shirou didn't know anything about Aura.

Give him a break, he didn't know that a field of thaumatology would be so wide spread. Dust was mystical but you didn't need to be a magus to use a sword Mystic Code to stab someone. He had just figured that Dust was common enough that Remnant had learned to use science to tap into its power.

"Shriou," Glynda said, placing her free hand on her well-rounded hip. "A scroll is a critical tool for a Huntsman. It allows you to see the state of your team, send messages back to civilization, receive requests, and record information in addition to a host of other functions. For combat alone, a scroll is helpful in determining strategy as it will tell you if your aura or that of a teammate's is low and they need to be protected."

Shirou blinked as he processed her words, laying back against the side of his own bunk.

It sounded like they could tell how many units of Aura they had.

"Wait, you can measure how much Aura a person has?" Shirou asked in surprise.

"Yes," Glynda blinked. "Of course, we can. We can measure the state of a person's Aura, their maximum capacity, and how much they have left. The scroll will then display it on the scroll and to devices that interface with it."

Shirou leaned back against his bed.

Looked like Remnant was more advanced than Earth again. You could do something similar on Earth for examining a person's Magic Circuits but that was a ritual that took time and preparation. And to do all of what the professor had just listed would involve several rituals or spells in sequence.

But to do all of those simultaneously and repeatedly with only a single device…

Though it did explain what that complex sensory device in the occasional scroll was for. He had never bothered to learn what it did but he did know how to fix it and replace it if a component had burned out.

"Are you not able to do that with magic?" Glynda asked, curiosity evident in how she held her head.

"No, there is a way," Shirou said. "But that is a combination of several rituals that requires some preparation to do. Nothing as quick or convenient like what you are saying though."

Glynda tilted her head thoughtfully as she considered that.

"Interesting," she muttered to herself.

Shirou wished he knew what she was thinking at that moment. But if he had, it would only have been Glynda realizing that Ozpin might have known of the ritual but since the magic was omly inherited from Maiden to Maiden, they probably had the exact same amount of magic as the previous Maiden.

"Not really," Shirou disagreed. "In combating magecraft, the most important thing is figuring out how each Mystery or spell works and then countering it. Knowing how many times your opponent can do a certain spell is useful but since they know their own capacity better, it isn't quite so useful."

Glynda frowned.

"I'm not sure I follow," she said. "Are you saying that discovering the opponent's Semblance is more important than their Aura capacity?"

"Semblance, the unique manifestation of a person's innate power and Aura?" Shirou recalled from her lecture the first night they had met. He nodded. "Yeah, I guess you can say that, although magecraft tends to run more in fields than in one unique manifestation. A person who can create a fireball tends to be able to do more magecraft based on fire and heat than just fireballs."

"Ah yes, that is the case," Glynda muttered to herself.

Shirou wondered at what she was thinking about as the woman's mind seemed to be somewhere else.

"Is it different with Semblances?" Shirou asked curiously.

He needed to know if he was going to be hiding his abilities by pretending to be a Huntsman when he was actually a magus. Sounded like a magus in fields other than Dust and Aura were much rarer here than a magus would be on Earth.

"Yes," Glynda snapped out of distraction to refocus her pretty green eyes on Shirou. "While everyone's Aura shares the same properties, including defensive properties, enhancing of physical qualities such as healing and strength, a person's Semblance is unique to them. My own, telekinesis, is quite different from Bart's or Peter's or even my own students. Although the occasional Semblance can on occasion appear the same such as Pyrrha Nikos's polarity when compared to my own, hers operates quite differently."

"Huh," Shirou considered it. Sounded less like everyone got their own specialized field of magecraft and more like their own Origin was manifested into a single spell. Like him and Tracing.

"Honestly, how you know to fix advanced machinery but not know anything at all about Aura is beyond me," Glynda shook her head reproachfully. "Surely, you had encountered someone who said something about it. It is one of the basic differences of a Hunter and a normal civilian."

"Well, I never met anyone with Aura," Shirou said, then frowned as a memory of some high tier fighters with some mystically infused weapons he talked with once came to mind. He had just assumed they used a hidden device to manipulate Dust in order to infuse their weapons. "Wait, come to think of it, there were those fighters who might have had Aura but they didn't ever talk about Aura. Just about Grimm and their families."

"Also, I might have only talked to them or anyone else about Miyu," Shirou admitted, looking away while feeling embarrassed. He didn't want to admit his own lack of sociability to this competent woman. But she was already on track to discovering it so no point in hiding it. "All of my conversations with people led back to Miyu in one way or another. And if they hadn't seen her, I usually didn't have anything to talk about."

Shirou could hear her sigh at that.

"Shirou, there is more to life than just one sister," Glynda said chidingly. "While finding and rescuing her is undoubtedly very important and something you should do, what will you do if it turns out that she is dead? You'll need a life after that."

Shirou stilled, his face twisting into a rictus of pain.

He hated thinking about that possibility.

Miyu had to be alive. He had to have saved her.

If he had instead sent her here to die-

No. He had wished on the Grail and on Miyu for her to have a small piece of happiness. And the wish obviously hadn't failed because she had brought him along. It had to have worked, even if it had separated the two of them.

Maybe Miyu wanted to punish him for taking so long to save her from the Ainsworth but she hadn't wanted to be without him after seeing him come out of his Reality Marble so badly injured.

But then, why hadn't he found her?

No, it was a big planet, Shirou reminded himself. She might be in one of the other kingdoms. He wouldn't have seen her while he had searched through all of Mistral if she was instead in Atlas or Vacuo.

But wouldn't they have landed close together when they came to this world?

"Shirou, Shirou!" Glynda shouted into his face one hand on his shoulder.

"Huh?" he responded, dragged out of his doubts.

"Are you alright?" She asked, her rushed voice full of concern. "I'm sorry if I touched on something I shouldn't have. She's probably still alive. I shouldn't have been so insensitive."

"No, you're fine," Shirou said, waving it off. "She's still alive. I know that."

"How do you figure? Magic?" Glynda asked with a little relief at his assurance.

"Magic," Shirou affirmed, without going into details.

He had already given away too much information about the Holy Grail when he mentioned it yesterday. If Glynda didn't know about the Holy Grail, then he shouldn't let her know.

Even the best of people could commit atrocities for power's sake or lie to hide what they really were. Shirou had trusted Julian and his good heart, especially when Julian had said that he would choose his sister over everyone else.

It might have been a lie. But Julian had always been fighting alone too. Yet when it came down to it, Julian had chosen to use a doll of his own sister for the Grail War. To risk one of the last reminders of his family, to lose what was important to him.

All for the sake of a good dream, a wonderful yet painful ideal. One of a hero of justice.

To sacrifice one to save all.

Shirou had defied it, cast aside his father's dream, betrayed his own promise to Kiritsugu. Everyone precious to him was gone and he had nothing left.

But Miyu had to still be alive. He had wished for her to have a warm share of happiness. You couldn't be happy if you were dead so Miyu must be alive.

Or so Shirou believed.

"It must be convenient to be so skilled in magic," Glynda said drily before hurriedly taking her white, smooth hand off of his shoulder and standing up.

Shirou got up as well. He must have really worried her if she had bent down to comfort him about his sister.

And she didn't know about the Grail and his wish so it really was logical for her to wonder about his belief in Miyu's continued existence.

"I'm not really," Shirou admitted. It would become quickly obvious that he wasn't a very good magus. Hiding it now would only lead to trouble in the future if they had high expectations of him. "But I know enough to know that Miyu has to be alive."

"If you say so," Glynda non-committedly said. "Anyway, what had we been talking about before we got onto our uncomfortable tangent? Must have been a happier conversation if we had to go off our path to find it."

"We were talking about fixing the turrets tomorrow," Shirou said, creasing his brow as he tried to remember.

"Ah yes," Glynda clicked her tongue. "Maybe I was too optimistic about the cheerfulness of our previous topic."

"You don't enjoy discussing ball bearings and their relation to keeping the turret able to swivel along its arc of fire?" Shirou asked sarcastically.

"If I am to talk about ball bearings, it is along the line of 'will you please move your shoe so I can put the ball bearing back where it belongs instead of replacing your own?'" Glynda riposted. "I am a busy woman, you know and I don't have time for crude attempts of flirting that fail to impress me."

"In interest of conserving time, why don't you show me the schematics now?" Shirou proposed. "That way you can get back to what you were doing and I can finish this up."

Shirou referred to the disassembled device he was putting back together before patting the bed behind him in invitation for her to sit down since they were both over here.

"No, let's sit at the table," Glynda said, looking at the bed like it scared her a tiny bit. "And I can split the screen to work on my own stuff while you study the designs."

It wasn't obvious but to a person who had shared the skills of Archer who had specialized in reading his opponents to determine their next action and how he should best counter it, Shirou could easily discern her fear, as minor as it was.

What it didn't do was tell him why his bed had spooked Glynda. It was as clean as her bed. And he had only slept in it for one night so it shouldn't smell bad or something.

But it really didn't matter, Shirou admitted as he got up. Sitting on a bunk in a shared dorm or in a chair didn't change anything.

And to speak honestly, he didn't need to look over the schematics. He would learn them as soon as he Structurally Analyzed the turret tomorrow. But spending the time now would help obscure his expertise at Structural Analysis.

A lot of magus underestimated the basics, Kiritsugu had taught Shirou. Reinforcement and Structural Analysis both were extremely useful for both combat and preparation for ambushes. Knowing where a gun or car engine was already failing could save a lot of work and time when it came time to sabotage the enemy counter-attack or escape route.

And Kiritsugu had to admit that with Shirou's extreme affinity for Material magecraft, he might as well specialize since he wouldn't have any other choice in magecraft. Shirou's talents were just too focused for him to learn Kiritsugu's other spells.

And while Shirou was starting to trust Glynda Goodwitch, obscuring the full breadth of his abilities was just smart. If you could deceive your current allies, then you were deceiving your enemies, whether present or future.

Glynda smelled nice, Shirou noted as he took a seat next to her as she split her large scroll screen in half. The half closer to him was for the schematics while the other half was her own stuff. A long checklist, judging by what he saw her open even if less than half of the items weren't checked off.

Shirou saw and heard Glynda scoot her chair away from him with a scraping sound as he leaned forward to get a better look at the screen.

Shirou wondered why. He didn't smell bad.

He thinks.

Maybe he was just in her personal space.

* * *

**Shirou spent his early childhood with Kiritsugu as an assistant. He's familiar with the corruption of politicians. I imagine that Kiritsugu had to kill a few and passed his disdain for the corrupt ones onto Shirou. And since the majority of politicians that Shirou saw were the corrupt ones before they died…**

**Shirou might not have the most respect for the field.**


End file.
